You, the Light I, the Dark
by nanirain
Summary: "You don't have to call me Skywalker. I know I'll never be one in your eyes." Rey and Ben go undercover in fancy, Sith ball rooms. Set 3 mo.s after TROS. Adheres to movie except for (TROS SPOILERS) Leia and Ben's bodies disappearing on-screen. Because this is a fixit. UPDATES EVERY TUES Cover image is by Elithienart. Go check out her stuff on insta (elithienart) or elithien.tumblr
1. Worse than Grieving

For three months after Exegol, Rey looks for ways to stopper up the holes inside her. At first, she thinks it's grief, plain and simple. She thinks that if she holds out long enough, staunches the wound firmly enough, time will blunt its edges, until one day she can touch the memories without drawing blood. Until one day, she can wake up and breathe without it hurting. She's done this before. For Han, and Luke, and her parents, and everyone who believed in her who she couldn't save from the war. And while Rey has learned that grief never truly passes, she has also learned that it does dull.

_But this is something different. Worse. _

The worry gnaws into her like a weed. Rey tries to starve it out, to clear her mind of all feeling, all thought. But worry burrows, twining with the deepest parts of her. Rey inhales. The air is piercing cold. She opens herself to numbness and the Jedi serenity. She tries to submerge her mind in the soothing pattern of glaciers she's sent serpentining around her.

Where it goes instead, is to Ben. Ben lifting her out of the void, his warmth an anchor inside her. Ben's hand, bare skin instead of leather, cupping her head as she comes back. Ben's eyes, seeking and beseeching, lining with tears. His mouth. His kiss. His smile. All falling away from her, his presence dissipating on the other side of their bond. And Rey running, screaming to find a ship to deliver him into safety, to hospitals and medics that could save him, and to Leia before she passes entirely. But by the time she'd found one and returned, there was no trace of him.

Something is keening in Rey, vast and irreparable. Ben Solo did not leave a blade of grief in her, as the others did. He has torn something away. Something crucial. And if she never gets it back -

"_Rey._"

She opens her eyes. The ice boulders topple to the ground, one narrowly misses crushing D-0. The droid shies back, stammering. "N-n-no thank you."

Rey cringes. She's been clumsy with the Force lately, and only seems to be getting worse. In a small act of defiance, she keeps hold of it and turns herself, still levitating, toward the interruption. It is Leia, wrapped in furs, gloved hands draped over the arm rests of her hover chair. Her feet are motionless. The general's mind had awoken from her collapse during the war, but the rest of her body had not. Because she was a Jedi, Leia was able to move herself from place to place, pushing her hover chair along with the Force. But the new stillness in the rest of the General's body bothered Rey. When given the choice, she preferred to focus on the Generals eyes, alert and intelligent and warm as they had always been. Currently, they are looking at her with exasperation and a touch of concern.

"I said, it's time to start the obstacle course." Several combat droids hover around Leia, a whirring, buzzing halo. They were waiting for her.

"Right. Um, sorry." Rey toes to the ground, graceful as a dancer in a landscape of jagged ice boulders. Her boots slide on the snow-powdered ice.

Before Leia can ask her if she's alright, Rey takes off. If Leia asks, she'll have to answer, and where would she even start? With a breath, Rey throws herself into the crevasse which holds her vertical obstacle course. She splits the frigid darkness with her light saber, and lets the screaming wind fill her ears.

#

Hours later, when her body is a banged up jumble stitched together with pain, Rey strips down in the women's locker room and steps under a column of hot water.

As Rose has pointed out several times, Rey is the only one aside from Leia who is permitted to bathe in the Jedi temple's lunar pool. Rei has entered those steaming, milky waters twice, both times under specific orders from Leia and in the name of her training. The pool was built by the Jedi to promote physical healing and mental clarity. Rey had not enjoyed the experience.

She preferred the women's locker room, with its hard steel frames, it's single mirror to share, and the chatter of the Resistance women as constant as the water squeaking from nozzles and slapping on the tiled floor, liable to turn from scalding to frigid at a moment's notice.

Tonight though, Rey is alone. Her training had run over time and the core of the Resistance would now be converging on the mess hall for dinner. Rey should be ravenous. She _feels _it, the hunger. But she has no inclination to eat. The tight knot of her stomach feels right inside her. Rey still eats, of course. Her body demands it, with all her grueling training and the frigid temperatures of this remote, little moon of a remote, little planet. Rey eats when its expected of her. She eats especially when Finn and Poe start casting glances at her dinner tray. She hates to make them worry. But food itself has become purely functional. If Leia had asked her to down a packet of sawdust three times a day, Rey would have approached it with the same enthusiasm.

The door to the locker room squeals. Moments later, the smell of meat and something creamy glosses the steamy air. Rey looks out past the shower divider and sees Rose sitting on the benches between the showers and the lockers. The petite girl smiles. "Hey."

"Hey," Rey says, grateful for the interruption of her solitude, but confused as to why Rose is here. Then she notices two clamshell containers on the bench by Rose's hip and nods toward them. "Did you get put on the night shift for the generator again?"

The ship's generator had been unreliable at best, kicking out in the middle of the night and plunging the ship into dangerous, sub-zero temperatures three times in the last week. Rose was the only engineer who could reliably keep it going through the night. She would take her dinner, a flashlight, and something to read down into the ship's belly and keep the generator company until breakfast, coaxing it back to life whenever it sputtered out.

"Yeah," Rose says, " but one of these is for you."

"Me?" Rey turns off the water and reaches for her towel. She tucks the thin, coarse material around her bust. "Thanks. I was going to the mess hall next though. Finn and Poe are probably waiting." Rey isn't sure why Rose wouldn't know this. Before the generator started acting up, Rose had been joining their table every night.

"Actually, General Leia wants to see you in her quarters, right away. She asked me to tell you. I thought you wouldn't have eaten yet, so…" Rose lifted the top container. "It's some kind of meat pie thingy."

Rey frowns. She'd been with Leia less than an hour ago. What could have possibly gone wrong between now and then? And then, the horrible selfish thought crosses Rey's mind. If something _had_ gone wrong, she might be glad for the distraction. Rey reaches for the container.

Rose frowns. "Do you want to, um, maybe get dressed first?"

"Oh. Right. Yes. Clothes. Are good."

"Very good," Rose nods. Her smile is sweet and uneasy.

The question flashes again, this time in Rose's eyes. _Are you alright_?

Rey lunges for the lockers.

#

Rey strides down the corridor, spooning meat pie into her mouth. D-0 trails her as fast as his single track will allow, his lens fixed on her curiously.

In the end, Rey's clothes had been too soiled to put back on. She had rummaged with Rose in the communal bins for something to wear and found a pair of training leggings that hit just below her knee, a sports bra that seemed clean enough, and a stiff black cargo jacket clearly intended for a broad shouldered man. Zipped up over the sports bra, it was comically over-sized. But Leia had never cared for decorum.

As she rounds the corner, Rey spots a waste chute. She shovels a final spoonful of meat pie into her mouth, then perches the closed container atop the chute. She's eaten less than a third of what Rose had packed for her and knows she ought to finished the whole thing, that her body will flag tomorrow for the lack of calories. But she can't be bothered with it. If the container was still there when she came out of her meeting with Leia, she'd consider taking it back to her apartment to finish it off.

Rey reaches Leia's door and pauses to straighten, wiping both sides of her mouth with the back of her hands. "How do I look?" she asked D-0. "Have I got food on my face?"

D-0 replies with a static-clouded mumble that sounds vaguely reassuring.

"Thanks. You can wait here for me if you'd like. If not, I'll see you back in the dorms."

Leia's door slides open when Rey knocks. The entryway is empty.

"Come in, Rey." Leia's voice calls from deeper in the apartment. "In the living room."

Rey crosses the entryway and heads to the first door on the right. She knocks as she opens it. "General Leia? Rose said you wanted -"

And Rey stops. Or maybe, the world does.

Because Leia is sitting before a small gas fire, her furs arranged over her. And to Leia's right, beside the small hearth, sitting forward with his forearms braced against his knees, looking up at Rey like a wound dreading to be reopened, is Ben Solo.


	2. More Masks

Ben Solo. He is looking at up her, with color in his skin and that dark, probing intensity in his eyes. Instinctively, Rey reaches for their Force bond. She runs headlong into the jagged void that rakes her mind. She winces, but when her senses return, Ben Solo is still there.

Still there.

Only, she cannot feel him so he cannot _truly_ be there. He is a waking dream. A ghost sent from the Force, or worse, her own mind making a desperate attempt to cover up damage that just won't heal.

"Hi," he says.

Rey reels. The world tips.

Leia says something, alarmed.

Ben starts up like he's going to catch her.

Rey's hand flies between them like a slap. Ben halts, half standing. Slowly, he eases back down, still poised to rise if needed. He is watching her intently.

Ray takes a breath. Her gaze sweeps the rest of the room but there is nobody else. She looks for an ounce of space, a place to _think_. That's when she notices there is a third chair by the hearth. It sits closest to the door, facing Ben and to Leia's left. It is right next to Rey, actually, but she had completely missed it. For obvious reasons.

Numbly, Rey lowers herself into it. The air feels thinner in Leia's quarters. Her skin feels thinner too, like Rey could burst clean through it. She gazes at the flame. Then, blinking, looks back to Ben. It hurts her mind to see him, especially when she cannot _feel_ him. Other than not being dead, he is exactly as she remembered him in Exegol. Strangely informal, open, and bright. A little wary. A little less certain. He is wearing a black long sleeve, combat pants, and military boots. The cowl is gone. The mask as well. She cannot find the glimmer of a light saber anywhere on him. This is not Kylo Ren at all then, but Ben. The man who saved her and then left her.

Ben is leaning in his chair toward Leia, speaking in soft baritone. "- told you this wasn't the way to do it."

"What… is this?" Rey blurts. Her voice is a fraction of its usual self, but at least she's capable of semi-coherent speech. Thought, on the other hand, continues to evade her. "How is this happening?"

"I understand this is a shock, Rey." Leia's voice is a cushion around her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. Quite honestly, I wasn't sure where to begin."

"Here probably wasn't the best spot." Ben offers.

"As you can see," Leia says, shooting a reproachful look toward Ben, "my son is alive."

"Yes," Rey says. "I can see that." And all her brain is screaming is, '_Alive Alive Alive Alive Alive'_

"I was shocked as well. Although I suppose I shouldn't be anymore, at this stage in my life. Apparently, his plan was to… '_live out a hermitic life'_. And never tell anyone that he survived your encounter with Palpatine."

Rey is staring at Ben, and Ben is staring at Rey. She still cannot feel him, so it is the blind staring at the blind. She wants to touch him, to know that he is solid. But if this _is_ a dream and she falls straight through him…

"But he's come to us now. He has brought us information he couldn't withhold."

"When?" Rey asks.

She can't tell if she is desperate or terrified for him to speak again. Ben glances at Leia, who answers for him.

"Three weeks ago. He came to me in secret. We haven't told anyone else."

"Three." Rey's voice splatters into the room and then she claps her mouth shut. Three weeks. Three weeks he has been alive and keeping it from her. If Rey wasn't so afraid he'd vanish at her touch, she'd get up and throttle him. "Why didn't you…" Rey trails. _Tell me. Come to me. Trust me._

"You didn't kneed to know. No one did."

_But I did. _Rey swallows stiffly. "Well, clearly, you're wrong about that. Because here you are."

The corner of Ben's mouth tightens. He sits back in his chair. When he speaks again, it is his First Order voice, the one he used for his storm troopers, his generals, his knights. Never for Rey. "The First Order is trying to rebuild."

"What? How?"

"The war left a power vacuum," Ben says simply. "First Snoke, then Palpatine. Now it's anyone's game."

"But we," Rey falters over the word, catching herself from looking directly at him, "destroyed the Sith." As soon as she says it aloud, Rey hears how naive it is.

"The Sith sat at the heart of the First Order," Leia confirms. "But the First Order was not merely the Sith. Those who flourished under its reign will not want to give it up that way of life. They are taking the First Order into their own hands"

"But why now?" Rey asks. "Why not sooner?"

"They were waiting to be sure that I was dead," Ben says. "After that, they waited a little longer to see who would make the first move. It isn't obvious who will be the strongest among them. They need to play this out carefully."

"And who is _they_, exactly?"

"Mostly old, ruling families," Leia sighs. "Ancient nobility and a few CEOs of intergalactic conglomerates that thrived under the First Order. Our best guess is that there are sixteen or so names that will likely form the next inner circle. Of those sixteen, four could plausibly take over as the next Emperor. The Tannias, the Rosshels, the Lannlas, and the Drakuns."

"And… do we like any of these families?"

"No," Lei smiles. "We do not. To give you a sense of what they're like, there were originally five houses vying for power. But the Vorians are no longer in play. Nearly the whole family, husband, wife, and four children were killed last month in an accident. Their ship hyper-jumped into a super nova."

"It wasn't an accident." Ben's voice is a ripple through Rey's body. "I knew Doran Vorian personally. He made it a point to never put his wife or children on the same vessel. They always left in different ships on different days, usually with at least a dozen decoys staggered in between. There's no chance that nearly all of them were on the same ship by choice."

"And no pilot worth anything hyper-jumps into a super nova," Ray says, thinking aloud.

"No," he agrees.

Rey makes the mistake meeting Ben's eyes. It's only a fraction of a second, but it jolts her delicate balance. She looks away. "Um, you both said '_nearly_' all of the family were on board?"

"His eldest escaped. Virya. She found me ten days after it happened, looking for help."

Rey jerks at that. "Found you? She knew?"

For the first time, Ben looks fleetingly uncomfortable. "She… believed," he said. "The Vorians have been devout followers of Vadar since the beginning. Her grandfather funded the construction of the Death Star."

There is something behind Ben's eyes. Something Rey cannot understand. Instinctively, she starts reaching for their bond, for his mind, but the jagged edges surge toward her and she shies. This time it is Ben who looks away.

"One of the other four families killed the Vorians and made it look like an accident," Leia's voice interrupts. "It's not an outright war, not yet. It's a political game. And only one of them is likely to survive."

"Okay," Rey says. "What is it you need me to do?" In her mind, she sees light sabers and explosions, charred debris and streaks of light piercing the muted cold of space.

"No violence," Leia says, "for now. Technically no one has committed any provable crimes. The universe hangs in a delicate balance, and all eyes are on our new government. The best thing we can do now is to redouble our efforts on building the New Republic, a just Republic, and show all those watching that we do not provoke violence. However, Ben has convinced me that we also cannot afford ignore the First Order Survivors, as they call themselves. An open strike is out of the question but we must be prepared to respond if the time comes. We need information, gathered discretely without any open confrontation."

Rey stares at Leia. Maybe it's because Ben is watching her, but she doesn't quite follow what is being asked of her.

"I want you to infiltrate the First Order."

"Infiltrate?"

"Spy," Ben clarifies softly.

"And… you want _me_ to do this?" Rey has done many things in her life. Bold, reckless, harebrained things. Whatever it took to survive Jakku, and then to survive the war. But espionage was not something she had ever imagined for herself. Discretion came as naturally to her as singing lead in an opera.

"Yes," Leia says.

If Rey weren't already sitting down, she'd need to find a chair. Immediately. "I don't think I'll be very good at this."

"You won't," Ben says. "You won't understand the cues of high society. You won't be able to blend in. At all. And even if you do, somehow, you'll have no idea how to recognize and decode the delicate dynamics she's asking you to report."

Rey makes a point to stare at Leia. She refuses — _refuses _— to give Ben the satisfaction of letting him see how furious he's making her. An hour ago he was dead. Now, he is not only alive, but he's treating her as if they are on a First Order ship, her strapped down to a torture gurney and him standing over her, explaining in his soft tones all the ways that she is insufficient.

"But I will," he says.

This time, Rey does look. Ben's eyes are deadly serious. Stubborn.

"You're joking."

"I'm not," he says.

"And how do _you_ propose to infiltrate the First Order?" Rey demands. "In what possible scenario are you _not_ going to be recognized?" She gestures at him. His impossible height. His aquiline nose. The unyielding shadows he carries in his eyes.

"The scenario where I'm your body guard. And I wear a mask."

_Of course_. _More masks. _

"And who am_ I _going to be that's important enough to merit having a giant, masked body guard hanging over me the whole time?"

Rey glares at Ben, but it is Leia who answers the question.

"You are going to be Virya Vorian."


	3. What is a Ball

"This is never going to work."

Less than an hour later, Rey sits across from Virya Vorian, the woman Rey is meant to become. Rey and Virya share the same ethnicity. They are both human and female. They also both have a pulse. And that's where the similarities end.

For one thing, Virya Vorian is haughty and cold, even while also being a quasi-prisoner, a tracking cuff locked around her ankle in case she has a change of heart. For another, she moves, hell she _breathes_, with a dignified grace that Rey has never come close to in her life. And, most importantly, she is shatteringly beautiful. Dark eyes, proud brows, and luscious blonde hair falling in waves down her back. Virya's face is like art, delicate features sharpened with beauty. She is slender, and tall, and her figure is so perfect it shouldn't be real. Even her skin is beautiful, flawless as fresh cream.

Sitting across from Virya, in a mismatched locker room outfit, Rey feels like a Hutt. She twists in her chair to look at Leia and Ben. "Did no one hear me? I said this is _never._ Going. To work."

"I'm inclined to agree," Virya sniffs.

"Oh my god. She has an _accent_." Rey swears.

"You have an accent," Ben points out.

"Not _that _accent." Rey snaps, without looking at him. She's still angry with him. Because anger is her best armor. It numbs her to the other emotions, ones she doesn't know how to deal with yet.

"Lord Ren," Virya's voice is a snake of honey. "This is folly. This girl will never be able to pass as me. She'll be stabbed or poisoned on sight."

"_Yes_." Rey points at the statuesque woman. "That. What she said."

Ben turns to look at Virya. And when he does, all Rey sees is Kylo.

"Whether she's stabbed or poisoned is not your concern. Just prepare her as well as you can. I'll handle the rest."

Virya starts to protest.

"You came to me seeking sanctuary, Virya," Ben reminds. "This is my price."

"But how do you propose I help… this?" Virya gestures toward Rey with an elegant flourish of the wrist.

"Spend time with her. Teach her what people know about you in court. Your pets. Your trips. Your favorite resort. Include little details. Help her walk and talk the way you do. That is all that I ask. If not for me, do it for your family. If we're successful, the New Republic will imprison their murderers."

Virya looks a Ben a long time. Her expression makes Rey want to get up and stand between them.

Eventually, the woman replies quietly, almost reverently. "You needn't mention my family, My Lord. They are dead. Our house is ruined. It is enough that _you_ ask it of me. You know I would do anything, if you would only ask."

Rey looks from Virya to Ben. Ben looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. Leia clears her throat, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"The Lorian Ball is next month," Virya says. "I'll have her as ready as I can by then."

"No. By the Frost Ball."

Virya blinks. "The Frost Ball is in less than a week."

"I'm aware."

"But-"

"It's important that Virya Vorian makes an appearance at the next ball, as a show of strength. Fail to do so, and you may as well have been on that ship with your parents and siblings. The other families will scorn you. They'll write you off as broken and weak. You won't be invited to their inner circle meetings, and we won't get the information we need. So as I said, the Frost Ball."

Virya looks like she's been made to swallow a whole porg.

"Sorry," Rey says. "What is a ball?"

#

All Rey wants to do is sleep. A nap would be enough. Ten minutes, that's all. She hasn't felt this way in a long time, the actual desire for rest. For the last three months, sleep has been a kind of war: Rey avoiding as long as possible, then sleep finally ambushing her, Rey kicking and screaming against the nightmares until they finally spit her out or D-O nudges her beside, asking '_H-h-hurts?'_

But now? What Rey wouldn't give for just ten minutes and a flat surface. She doesn't even know what time it is.

Ben is standing before her in an empty storage facility, somewhere in the belly of the ship. Leia sits in the corner, watching Rey's first lesson in… ballroom something. Rey had tried to memorize the name but her mind is wrapped in a shell of exhaustion. New information, names, and facts are all glancing off her skull and into the abyss.

"Take that off," Ben says.

"What?"

Ben points. She realizes he's talking about her over-sized cargo jacket. "That. Take it off."

Rey bristles, even though Ben has no way of knowing she's only wearing a sports bra underneath. "Why?" she challenges.

He frowns. "Because, waltzing is about proper posture and clean lines. And I can't see those when you're wearing a grain sack."

Rey looks at Leia. The General nods, taking Ben's side.

Numbly, Rey pulls the zipper down and shrugs off the jacket, tossing it onto a crate. A sharp inhale slices the room. Because she is staring at the floor, Rey doesn't know if it was Leia or Ben. She can feel him staring at her, though, almost as acutely as she feels the chill pricking her exposed torso. She fights a shiver.

"This good?" she asks, defiantly.

At first, there's no answer. And then Ben's voice, oddly tight. "Fine."

He steps forward, within touching distance. Rey steps back. "What are you doing?"

"Starting the waltz," he says, as if that explains anything. His voice still sounds strained, like maybe he's just been shouting, though she's been with him this whole time. "It's a dance."

And then he offers her his hand.

Rey's breath hitches. Her body goes taught. She tries to keep her gaze fixed on the neckline of his shirt. But Ben is holding his hand out between them and it tugs on her like the Force itself. She can't _not_ look at it. Upturned, waiting. Asking.

_Join me._

Rey wavers. She is terrified that this is all a dream, then that it isn't. But she has to know, once and for all, if he is real.

She touches a fingertip to his.

His fingers twitch slightly at the light contact. Rey can feel his careful breathing. And Ben is solid. Real.

She is trembling now, and it isn't because of the chill. She softens her wrist, letting the rest of her fingers slide across his, over the broad plane of his palm. Ben closes his fingers, so slow and gentle, carefully taking her hand in his. Rey's armor fractures. A strange, boiling current seeps through its cracks.

She tries to speak, but the current rising in her leaves no room for words. And besides, where would she even start?

A door swings open. Rey and Ben jolt, turning. There is a figure in the doorway, back lit by the light in the hall. And while there is a veil of shadow over his face, Rey recognizes the outline immediately.

"Finn, wait. It's not-"

And then Finn is screaming, hurtling into the storage room, careening straight into Ben.


	4. Trust Exercises

Finn is swinging before they've even hit the ground. And he is faster and stronger, no, _angrier _than Rey has ever seen him. It actually makes her take a step back.

Then the fear snaps her out of it. She has to stop this fight. Because Ben will tear her best friend apart.

"Stop! Fin, stop!"

Either Finn can't hear her, or he doesn't care. He is screaming and swinging, again and again, fists slamming down onto the larger man beneath him. Rey reaches for the Force, but then remembers how clumsy she's been with it. This morning she'd nearly crushed D-O with her poor control. She can't take that risk with them. Rey lunges forward. She wraps her arms around Finn's torso, trying to haul him backward before Ben can regain his senses. But something, a fist maybe, catches Rey on the mouth and she staggers back, tasting blood.

"What the _hell_?"

Rey whirls. Poe stands in the doorway Finn left open, wide-eyed, mouth parted, arms outstretched in question.

"What are you guys doing down here?" Rey demands.

"Visiting Rose! Do I even _want _to know what you're doing down here?" He's taking in her bleeding mouth, the sports bra, and the two men fighting on the ground at her feet.

"Argh!" Finn screams.

Rey whirls, fearing the worst. But Finn is sitting upright, his arms held behind his back by invisible restraints. His knuckles are wet with blood. Rey thinks it's Ben at first, but then realizes it's Leia using the Force to restrain him. Rey feels power spilling out from the General, her gaze fixed on the fight. Rey breaths a sigh of relief.

And then Finn sees it, _feels _it too. His eyes lock onto Leia and he bellows, defiant. He _pushes_. The Force erupts from him, sloppy and sudden. Leia's hover chair shoots backward by a foot, colliding with the wall. The General gasps in shock, dropping the Force. Finn falls on Ben again.

"Alright, seriously!" Poe shouts. "What the _hell_ is going on!"

"I can explain! Just help me separate them!"

"Separate them?" Poe gestures to Finn, screaming and punching, and Ben, still not getting up. "Seems like it's going pretty well for us."

"Poe, please! He'll _kill_ him!"

Poe gives her a look kind of like murder and then, swearing, he dives in. It takes both of them to haul Finn up. Poe grapples him into a wrestling hold, his elbows hooked under Finn's armpits and his hands clasped behind Finn's neck. Rey gets between Finn and Ben and pushes on Finn's chest, shoving him up and off while Poe lifts and drags. Then she whirls to stand between Ben and her friends.

She expects to face a tower of shadow. Kylo Ren radiating malice, a red cross pulsing to life in his fist.

Instead, Ben is still on the ground, glowering at his attacker but not getting up to charge. A welt, perforated with blood, is blooming on his left cheekbone. He wipes at it with his knuckles and _tsk_s, irritated. When he gets up, he moves slowly, showing Rey his empty hands.

Rey doesn't move a muscle. She is waiting for him to explode.

"… it easy, Finn. Just calm down for a -"

Behind her, Poe is trying talk Finn down. Finn, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have any interest in listening. Rey can hear his ragged breathing. She can feel his hatred lancing through her and straight into Ben.

"What," Finn pants, "is _he_ doing here?"

"Yeah," Poe seconds, still straining to keep Finn under control. "I'd also like an answer to that one. Or maybe, you know, I might feel my grip starting to slip."

"He's not here to hurt us," Rey says, and cringes inwardly, because even she can hear the touch of disbelief in her voice. "He's here to help."

Finn spits. Rey is actually shocked to see how furious he is.

"It's-"

"True." Leia's voice is like a wet blanket, smothering the smoking violence. Even Finn deflates slightly. "And if we could all just take a moment and talk things out, I'm sure we can - "

_Zap! _A dash of red streaks past, glancing off the floor. It leaves an angry, smoking scorch mark where Ben has just lifted his foot in the nick of time.

The entire room turns.

Rose is standing in the doorway, her ray gun leveled at Ben. "What," she asks coldly, "is _he_ doing here?"

Ben lets out a low, frustrated growl. Rey covers her face with her hands.

She is really looking forward to that nap.

#

"I don't like it," Finn says later, hunched on an examining table in the medical wing.

"We all noticed that," Poe said. "From the way you screamed your head off and tried to beat him to death."

"You shouldn't have stopped me."

"He could have killed you, Finn," Rey says.

"She has a point."

"I had him until you two stepped in."

"Also a fair point."

Rey glares a look at Poe, who bites into an apple and raises his eyebrows at her like, _What do you expect from me?_

"Look, Finn, I know it's hard to believe. But he did turn in Exegol. He helped me defeat Palpatine. He brought me back to _life_."

"And then he ghosted you in a collapsing crypt. What a gentleman."

"He didn't have to come back, Finn. He wants to help us stop the First Order from rebuilding."

"Rey, this guy has switched sides so many times, I don't even think he knows which one he's on anymore. The only thing you can count on him to do is backstab whoever he's standing next to. Right now, that's you. I mean, God, Rey. Do you even remember -"

The curtain flies back and a thin, wiry nurse steps between them. The trio falls quiet, waiting as she dabs a pungent, fizzing ointment on Finn's split and bloodied knuckles, oblivious to the tension she's stepped straight into.

"Keep it clean with this." She hands Finn a bottle of antiseptic and a shrink wrapped pack of bandages. "Change the wrapping least once a day."

"I will, Ma'am. Thank you."

"And you girl, your mouth. Do you need me to take a look at that?"

Rey blinks, remembering the taste of blood in her mouth. She hasn't even looked at herself since. "Uh, no I'm fine. Thank you."

The nurse shrugs and steps out, closing the curtain behind her. Finn leans in, his voice a harsh whisper.

"Do you even remember all the shit he did to us? He tortured Poe for the Skywalker map. He tried to kill me, and BB-8, and Luke, _and_ you. Multiple times. He led the siege on Crait. He killed _Han_, Rey. And then I had to just stand there on the Death Star and wait, thinking that he was going to -" Finn cuts of abruptly. His grip tightens on the edge of the examining table.

Poe shoots a meaningful look at Rey, which she ignores.

"What I'm saying is," Finn continues, slower now. "I think it's stupid to trust this guy. And I don't want him on this ship."

"Noted," Rey says. "I'll let Leia know you feel that way."

"If you tell her you feel that way too, she would listen."

"Maybe," Rey agrees. "But I don't."

Finn looks like he wants to break something, potentially Rey's face. "Rey, can you really look me in the eye and tell me you'd trust him with your life? Actually, no. Here's a better one for you. Can trust him with _our_ lives? With this?"

Rey doesn't need to ask what Finn's referring to. He's talking about the Resistance. About Poe, and Rose, and the droids, and Leia, and Finn himself. Her family.

Rey hesitates, wishing he didn't know her so well. "I… yes."

And Finn looks so very disappointed. "You're lying. You _want _to trust him, but you don't. Because you know, like we do, that Kylo Ren is a monster."

"Well, maybe he's not Kylo Ren anymore," Rey snaps. "Maybe he's Ben Solo, who gave me back my life. And you know what, Finn? You of all people don't have any right to deny anyone the chance to prove they're more than their past."

She regrets it immediately. The words hit Finn hard, dousing his anger and replacing it with hurt.

"Ok," Poe says, stepping between them. He is still holding his half-eaten apple. "Let's just take a second here. Finn, I'm with you on this one. I hate the guy and I don't trust him. But if Leia and Rey are the ones asking, I can wait and see how it plays out. Also, I don't want to kick him off the ship. Frankly, if Kylo Ren is alive, I want him right here where I can see him. Think of him as a prisoner, alright? Like house arrest. As soon as we get the slightest proof that he's trying to hurt Rey, we take him out."

Rey looks disbelievingly at Poe. When did he get so diplomatic?

"You both good with that?" Poe asks.

"Yes," Rey says.

Finn is looking at his bloody knuckles and not at Ray.

Poe takes his silence as tacit acceptance. "Great." The pilot claps a hand each on Finn and Rey's shoulders, forming a human bridge between them. "Good work, guys. Now, I don't know about you two, but I need some sleep. It's been just a hot mess of a night and I am… so done."

Poe steps through the curtain, shaking his head and biting his apple with an audible crunch. And then Rey and Finn are alone.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean-"

"It's fine." Finn says. But she knows it's not. "I'm just scared for you, Rey."

_I'm scared for me too. _Rey bats the thought from her mind. "Well, you don't have to be," she sits down beside him on the examining table. When she rests her head on Finn's shoulder, she feels him relax. "I've faced him down like six times now, might I remind you. And I've always walked away."

"Yeah," Finn says softly. "But every time you do, he takes another piece of you."


	5. Parole Officer

At three-thirty in the morning, Rey finally makes it to the dorms, dragging her exhaustion behind her like a physical weight. The hallways are silent, no other footsteps aside from her own. But as Rey approaches her room, she hears the familiar whir of a wheel coming to meet her.

"Hey, D-O."

"Long time. W-w-orry."

"I know," Rey says. "Sorry about that."

She is about to press her thumb to the ID pad on her door, when she notices that the apartment next to hers is illuminated with a red light. Rey stares at the little light, her brain sluggish to comprehend why it would be on. The unit next to hers has always been vacant. Had someone moved in without her noticing?

She hears footsteps in the hall. She and D-O both turn. But Rey already knows who will round the corner.

Ben halts when he sees her. The bruise under his left eye stands proud, purple and scabbing.

Another bit of weight stacks onto Rey's fatigue. "Let me guess," she says, pointing to the door beside hers.

"Leia asked me to stay on the ship. As a show of good faith." Ben's tone is a touch defensive. "I didn't choose the room."

"Like house arrest," Rey mutters. She wonders if Poe went straight to Leia after leaving her and Finn, or if he and the General just had the exact same thought. Part of Rey wants to slam her head into her door in frustration. The other part acknowledges that it makes sense. Out of entire Resistance, Rey is unquestionably the most qualified person to keep an eye on Ben. "I guess this makes me your parole officer."

"Sorry." Ben's apology is almost timid. Sincere. Like he hates to be in the way.

Rey blinks, taken aback. "Um. It's fine. So do know how everything works around here or…?"

Ben shakes his head. "No."

"Alright." Rey steps over to his door. She points at his ID pad. "Put your thumb here to open the door. Red means locked, green means open. No light means vacancy."

Ben glances down the hallway. "You have a lot of vacancies."

Rey tenses. "Yeah. Well. Our core numbers are still recovering. From Crait."

Ben's expression shuts like a window sliding closed. Rey clears her throat of all the things she both does and does not want to say.

_Do you even remember all the shit he did to us? _She banishes Finn's voice from her mind.

"So. Um. If Leia put you in here, it should be set up with your prints already. Each door is coded to open only for the tenant, and it won't let anyone else in. Watch." Rey puts her thumb on Ben's door, waiting for it to flash red and deny her entry. It flips to green. The door sighs and slides an inch away from its frame.

Rey stares at the opened door. She can feel Ben standing right behind her.

"Parole officer," he mutters.

"Ok, well. It shouldn't do that for anyone but you. I mean, us. I guess." She shoves the door closed and it locks automatically. She steps back and stuffs her hands into the cargo jacket. "You try."

Ben steps toward her, glancing at D-O, and presses his thumb to the ID pad. The light blinks green, and the door slides opens again.

"Great." Rey motions him to step inside. As he passes, she jerks her head at D-O, gesturing the droid to follow. She isn't ready to be alone with Ben, not even for a quick room tour. D-O obligingly rolls forward. Rey slides the door closed behind them and waits for the interior light to turn red, signaling the door is locked. Most of the Resistance wouldn't recognize Ben without his mask. But she doesn't want to take any chances, not after the storage room disaster.

"So, this is your apartment," she announces. She turns and is taken aback by how small the room is. Then she realizes the room isn't actually small, Ben just makes it feel that way. It's his height, Rey decides, how easily he could reach up and touch the ceiling. Or maybe it's the width of his shoulders, taking up too much space in the room.

"Closet, desk, bed." Rey points to each, realizing as she does that Ben's room is an exact mirror of her own. His bed, which is bolted down for hyper jumps and emergency landings, is even up against the same wall that hers is bolted to on the other side. Rey grabs that thought by the neck and shoves it down, hard.

"Food area over there. No ovens, it's a fire hazard, but there's some cupboards and a mini fridge. This is your bathroom." She steps across the room to slide open the door. The same exact sink, toilet, and cubical shower as in Rey's room.

"There's a cabinet behind the mirror. The sink doesn't run hot. Also, our personal showers get turned off whenever we're in space to save water. We have to use the locker rooms to shower then. But this moon is basically made out of ice, so plenty of water for now." Rey takes the single step she needs to cross the bathroom and reaches into the shower stall. She slides dial to start a stream of water, then quickly turns it off. "All make sense?"

She glances in the mirror and sees Ben in it, watching her. He's standing on the other side of the door frame, and Rey is relieved he hasn't crossed the threshold. The bathroom is small enough for one person. If he were to step inside with her, it would be downright claustrophobic.

"Makes sense," Ben says.

Rey studies him in the mirror. His reflection is somehow easier for her to look at than the actual man himself. When the reflection of Ben's eyes meet hers, Rey doesn't look away.

"You're taking this better than I thought," he said.

Annoyance lashes like a solar flare through her numb exhaustion. "How did you think I was going to take it?"

"I thought you'd be angrier."

"I am extremely angry," Rey tells him. "I'm just too tired to kick your arse right now."

She holds his stare in the mirror. And then, unexpectedly, Ben smiles. Like he's missed her.

Rey has to look away.

She finds the place where his scar had been, the one she gave him in the forest and then healed for him in the sea. She follows its memory down his face, stopping just left of his mouth. And then Rey remembers his mouth. The way it felt on hers, and the warmth of him when he smiled. Ben's smile. Rey yanks her eyes up, landing on the new bruise swelling under his eye.

"I'm sorry about Finn," she says. "Thank you for not…" and she's about to say '_Thank you or not murdering him' _but she decides that isn't the best way to phrase it. "Thank you."

"You realize he's in touch with the Force," Ben says. "Though entirely lacking in training."

"He's Force sensitive sometimes," Rey says. "It's pretty on and off. But Leia's entire days have been absorbed in politics lately. And there's not much I can teach him." _I can't even teach myself_, she thinks. "Why didn't you fight back?"

Ben gives her a dry look. "And how would that have ended?"

Rey's mouth squeezes into a thin line. Pain pricks the split in her lip. She winces.

"Does that hurt?"

"Not much." Rey runs the tip of her tongue along the scab, wiping metallic blood. "I just keep forgetting about it. Yours?"

Ben shrugs.

"I could try to heal it for you, if you'd like." Rey turns around and reaches for the bruise on Ben's face.

He catches her fingers, so quick it startles her.

"Don't."

"Why not?"

He doesn't answer. He also doesn't release her fingers. He holds them where they were caught, close to his face. And it is almost like they've entered a pocket in the Force, a space that belongs only to them. A place like what their bond might have created. Rey reaches carefully for Ben in the Force, certain she will find him now. But she brushes against jaggedness, like a broken tooth, pricking her probing touch.

"Why can't I feel you anymore? Our bond in the Force. Is it really…" And she can't say the word aloud, so Ben says it for her.

"Broken."

She'd been ready for it to hurt. Even still, there isn't enough anger left in Rey to stop the tears. A valve creaks open somewhere inside. Rey ignores it, determined to get the answers that she needs. Ben must see the emotion pooling, threatening to spill over her lashes. But he doesn't make a scene. He lets her carry on pretending. He looks into her eyes instead of at her tears.

"Was it Palpatine?"

"No," he says softly. "It was me. Palpatine said that the dyad's bond was a power like life itself. So I spent it, all of it, to give yours back."

Rey struggles to absorb this. It's difficult to swallow that _she _is the reason their bond had to be sheared. If only she'd been stronger, faster, or smarter. If only she hadn't died.

"How did you know it would work?"

"Because it had to."

She can feel Ben's nearness, the heat from his body.

"Okay. But… why didn't you tell me you were alive?"

Ben's jaw flexes. He squeezes her fingers, a fierceness in his grip. "Because you didn't deserve it."

That stings her. Hurt, at first. And then, outrage. Before Rey can ask him what the _hell_ that means, something thunks by their feet. D-O twitters, looking quizzically at the leg of Ben's desk, a small scuff mark where the droid bumped into it.

Ben drops Rey's hand and turns from her. He is fighting against something. She just doesn't know what.

"It's late," he says. "And we have a long day tomorrow. Good night, Rey."

His back is to her, and Rey can tell he isn't turning around again until she's gone. Fiercely, she rubs the tears from her eyes, furious at him and at herself for crying. "Right," she says tightly. "Good night."

#

Later, in bed, Rey expects sleep to come for her at once. She is, after all, so very tired. But it doesn't, forsaking her now that she's finally come willingly. With eyes open, Rey stares into a darkness so complete, she could dissolve within it. She is as hollow as a sea shell, her breath a tide rolling in and out and in again. Her heart beats steady inside its cage of bone. She thinks of Ben. She tells herself that even though she can't feel him in the Force, he is just beside her, drawing his own inhales, feeling his own pulse. On the other side of the wall, Ben is measuring out his own life, which is not over. Not done. Alive.

Rey flattens her palm on the steel divider, feeling for the heartbeat on the other side.


	6. Silk to Spin

The next morning, the little red light on Ben's door is Rey's only proof that last night wasn't a dream. She stares at the lock. If she touches her thumb to its sensor, the door would click open and she could just check in.

Right. Just check in. And then what would she say to him?

_Morning. Just wanted to make sure you're still a good guy. Also, not dead. Also, if maybe now you feel like explaining - _

"L-l-left already," D-O interrupts her mental landslide.

"How do you know?"

The droid rolls its wheel over a small square of paper she hadn't noticed, slipped underneath her door.

_With Leia._

_ \- The Parolee _

His handwriting isn't what she'd expected. Choppy and irregular, a bit too thick in some areas and too thin in others. Childlike. Rey kicks the note further inside her apartment before sliding it closed. She isn't hungry, but she knows she should eat after her light dinner last night. She heads for the mess hall for breakfast.

#

When she comes to their usual table, Rey is surprised to see that only Poe is there with BB-8. D-O tucks his cone and shyly approaches the larger droid, who whirs excitedly.

"Where's Finn?" Rey asks.

"Thought he'd be with you."

Rey shakes her head, sitting down across from Poe. "Rose is sleeping?"

"Probably. She was up all night with the generator. Where's Tall, Dark and Evil?"

"Tall, Dark, and-"

"Code name," Poe says, glancing at BB-8. "Don't want to alarm the droid. I haven't told him yet."

"Well, he's with Leia. No need to sound the alarm."

Poe bites the crust off his toast. "So, what's this great plan he's brought us? How are we gonna stop the Fuh…"

Poe trails as a resistance pilot passes their table, nodding to him. Poe nods with a big smile that falls off his face once she's passed.

"The Assholes Who Won't Be Named from rebuilding?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"But I wont leave you alone 'til you do."

So Rey tells him, in hushed tones without mentioning any names. Poe just sits staring, disbelief piling up on his brow.

"So, I'm going to be this… highborn daughter of the Dark Side. And he's going to go as my body guard. Apparently."

"He's going undercover too?"

Rey nods.

"What's he gonna do, wear a hat? That guy stands out in a crowd more than anyone I've ever seen."

"That's what _I_ said!"

"I could pick him out by his nose alone. Thing's like a can opener in the middle of his face. Also, are you not eating breakfast?"

Rey realizes she hasn't even made a start on her gruel. She picks up her spoon.

"You're going to have to talk to Finn, you know."

"I did last night, after you left. We're good."

Poe gives her a hard look over his coffee. "I'm not talking about the Ren thing," Poe says, as if he is speaking to a youngling. "I'm talking about the you-and-Finn thing."

"There is no me-and-Finn thing."

"Great. Does Finn know that?"

Rey sighs, pushing her half eaten gruel away. "He's my best friend, Poe. I don't want to do anything to mess that up or… I just don't want to make any assumptions about his feelings if I don't have to."

"I think we're way past the point of assumptions, Rey. Did you miss the way he threw himself at Tall, Dark and Evil?"

Rey swallows some coffee, wishing she had skipped breakfast altogether and never run into Poe. "I'm really bad at this sort of thing."

"I know. That's why I never made you talk about the you-and-me thing."

Rey straightens in alarm. "The — _what_?"

But Poe is smiling crookedly at her and standing. "Got ya." He winks, taking his coffee with him as he goes.

#

"The Force is just not with me today," Rey pants to herself. _Or any day for a while now. _

Rey is trying, unsuccessfully, to smooth the trajectory of the frozen rock that she is guiding. She wills it to weave in and around the steel rods Leia had driven into the ground for her. The rock careens wildly around a corner and smashes into one of the posts, bashing it askew. The rock ricochets and shatters, bursting into a jumble of irregular frozen chunks.

Rey swears, then closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. It wasn't the power that was missing, it was control. Rey could still lift people, boulders, even entire glaciers with the Force, but whether the object landed softly back on the ground or exploded into a rain of shrapnel was completely out of her control. Three months straight of training had made no improvement. She had good days and bad days, but lately the good ones were spreading fewer and far between.

Rey tries to find serenity. She sends herself out into her surroundings, as Luke taught her. The sharpness the air. The smell of ice on the wind. The skittering of snowflakes. She reaches again for the Force.

"I say! Good morning, Rey Skywalker!"

Rey leaps a foot high and whirls, flinging the Force out of her grip. Something cracks behind her, and she feels the vibration in her feet. In the distance, a glacier splits apart and crumbles into a black sea.

"3PO!" Rey snaps. "Don't ever sneak up on me like that when I'm using the Force. Ever."

The droid halts. "Oh. So sorry. It was not my intention to 'sneak up'."

Rey pants, heart in throat. "It's fine. Sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. What is it? Is everything alright?"

"Oh, well. I received a missive from General Leia's channel, asking that you proceed to her quarters immediately. Apparently, it is of the utmost urgency."

Rey's heart plunges from throat to bowels. She takes off at a run for base ship. Leia's mornings were always stacked with political meetings, debates, votes, and drafting sessions for the New Republic. Rey can only think of one thing that could break Leia's political engagements with 'utmost urgency'.

#

Rey jams her thumb onto the ID sensor instead of knocking on Leia's door. The lock flips to green and rolls open for her. Leia had added Rey's fingerprint to her access list weeks ago, but until now Rey had never had the gall to actually use it.

She leaps into the entryway, which is quiet and empty. She starts for the private back rooms, wondering when she will catch a whiff of smoke, or the keening of an alarm. And because she is keeping her senses open wide for potential disaster, she hears their voices early enough to avoid barreling into them.

"…from a monster like you."

Finn and Ben look up as Rey comes around the corner. She looks between the two men. She is clearly interrupting something.

How did Finn even get in here?

His hands are clenched fists at his sides, knuckles still wrapped from last night. And after one good look at his face, Rey is ready for him to start swinging. Finn seems to seriously consider it, then he exhales sharply and turns his back to Ben. He steps in close to her.

"Hey," he says. "You okay?"

"Uh, yeah," Rey answers, her mind still racing with barely suppressed panic. She is confused as to why Finn is taking her hands and speaking so low. "Are… _you_ okay?" she asks, raising a brow.

"Yeah," Finn answers. He is looking right at her, but Rey can tell he isn't really seeing her. His every sense is honed on Ben, standing behind him and watching this exchange.

"Okay. Good. I'll see you later," Finn says. And then he plants a quick, closed-mouth kiss on Rey's temple.

Rey stands speechless. Her brain trips and stutters.

Finn starts for the exit as if nothing unnatural just happened.

"Think about what I said," Ben calls, his voice stalking after Finn like a predator.

Finn's only reply is a pointed silence, and then the clang of the front door, shut a little harder than needed.

Ben looks down like he's just noticed her. "Where have you been?"

"Uh." Rey is still recovering from whatever the hell just happened. "Sorry?"

"This morning. Where were you." Ben phrases it like a question, but there's no doubt it's a command. _Report soldier_, he may as well have said.

Rey arches an eyebrow. It's starting to seem more and more like there isn't some great emergency. "Force training. You?"

"Force training? Did you forget the part where we have six days to make you into Virya Vorian?"

"No. Did _you_ forget the part where your plan is stupid and never going to work? I mean, that's like a can opener."

"That's — _what_?"

It had sounded better when Poe said it.

Ben rakes his black hair, searching for patience. "Look, Rey. I know you don't want to do this. But I don't see that we have any options or any time. If you have a better idea, please feel free to share it. Otherwise, you may keep poking holes in this one. It's very helpful."

Rey opens her mouth, then realizes she doesn't have a great, alternative plan. In fact, she doesn't even have a remotely feasible plan. "I'm never going to pass as her," she mumbles.

"And why not?"

"Uh, I don't know. Maybe because she's _gorgeous_?"

Ben gives her a strange look.

"Also, blonde," Rey continues. "She talks like she was born with a diamond spoon in her mouth. And I bet she can waltz." Rey searches but cannot find any more reasons, so she settles for staring defiantly up at him.

"Finished?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Ben turns and starts down the hallway.

Rey, not knowing what else to do, follows. "Where's Leia?"

"In some political meeting."

"Then who called me here?"

"I did."

That wasn't how the parolee to parole officer relationship was meant to work. But now that she's been summoned, she can't exactly turn tail and run. Instead, Rey watches Ben's back as it leads her down the hall. He is so rigid, so formal compared to the Ben she spoke to last night. A moment of honesty before he walled himself off again. She knows trying to restart that conversation now would be about as useful as bashing her head into said wall.

"Where are we going?" she asks miserably.

"You're going to spend some time with Virya. I'm going to Borea."

"Borea?" Rey perks up at the mention of the nearby planet. It had a shady reputation at best, making the Jakku desert look like a pinnacle of morality by comparison. "Why?"

"They have the largest black market in the system, and we'll need an unregistered ship to travel by. Something that cloaks in case things go south. Maybe a night crawler."

"A colibri."

Ben stops to look at her. And wow, he really is running out of patience, judging by that flash in his eyes and the tightness in his jaw.

"Please explain to me why the Force we'd need a top of the line racing ship."

"Because it's fast."

"Cloaking is the best option for a covert mission."

"But speed is what will keep us alive if we get caught, since I'll be piloting."

"Since you'll be piloting?"

Rey crosses her arms. "Yes."

"I'll remind you that you're going to be in a dress. A really long one."

"Your point?" Rey lifts her chin and does not mention that she's never been in a dress of any kind, long or short. "Plus, I've always wanted to drive one. Plus plus, you owe me."

Ben's black brow arches. "Do I now?"

"Yes. You are making me play dress up as a stupid, sparkly princess for your stupid, suicidal spy plan. Also, you made me believe you were dead for a quarter of a year and you refuse to talk about it like a mature adult. So, yeah. You owe me."

Ben's jaw flexes. Then he sighs, like pressure releasing from a broken seal. "I'll see what I can do."

Rey grins.

"That was _not_ a promise, Rey. If I find an unregistered Crawler, I'm going for it. In the meantime," he points at the door they've stopped at. "In."

Rey glances at the door. "Leia's master bathroom?"

"Yes. Don't waste time with questions, you're already late." He is walking away from her down the hall.

"And what do you want me to do in here?" she shouts after him.

"Play dress up." He rounds the corner and is gone.

Rey sighs and opens the door to Leia's private bathroom. Harsh, blinding light slaps her in the face. Rey raises her hand, squinting.

A tall man stands on a dressing dais in the middle of the room, surrounded by a forest of halo lights. The glaring effect is multiplied by a wall of mirror opposite the dais. The tall man is surrounded by a bevy of squat creatures with wide eyes and slender hands. They are making great stacks fabric on every available surface.

Outside of the circle, sitting unhappily in an armchair, is Virya Vorian. She is wearing a silk romper that ends at her mid-thigh and an elegantly disdainful expression. "A stupid, little Princess, am I?"

Rey coughs. Virya must have heard her through the door. "Sorry."

"You must be Rey," the tall man says. "I am the Seamster. Come in. Welcome. Undress yourself." He spreads his arms wide, revealing three sets of smaller, secondary arms reaching out from his torso. Black, globular eyes run in a ring around his bald head. Rey has never seen his species before, but he reminds her of the sand spiders she used to shake out of her boots each morning on Jakku. The man's smile is so wide, it threatens to split his face. "Now, now, I said come in. Up here with me, please. Snip snip, no time to waste. We've got a _lot_ of silk to spin."


	7. Simple Procedures

"Name my favorite color."

"Um, gold."

"Don't be so cliche. It's mauve. In which solar system was I last publicly photographed?"

"Zarthius."

"Sadu. No one worth more a zillion would be caught dead in Zarthius." Virya sighs, looking up from her list of questions. "Are you even trying?"

"Yes," Rey says, wishing her hands were free so she could pinch the migraine budding behind her eyes. "I'm trying." Her hand is not free. One of the helpers is measuring the diameter of her wrist, then every knuckle of every one of her fingers. How can this possibly be necessary?

"Then, you're mentally slow."

Rey slants a glare at Virya. "I can assemble a neutron isolation shield in eight minutes flat. Your personal life just isn't that interesting to me."

"Likewise. However, unlike you, _my_ life doesn't depend on memorizing yours. Is staying alive at the Frost Ball interesting enough to you?"

Rey's jaw aches. She hates that Virya is right. "Yes."

"Very well then. What is the name of my favorite cat?"

Rey wracks her brain for mention of any cats in the last four hours. "Fluffy?"

"No. That was a trick question. I don't have any cats."

"Then why would you ask about them?"

"To see if there's a lower limit to what I'm working with. Your mind is a sieve."

"If you don't have any cats," Rey grits through her teeth. "Then why would anyone at the function _ask _you about cats? Can we at least focus on things it will be _helpful_ to remember?"

Virya drops her tablet onto the side table and sits in her chair, sighing with a great deal of drama. "I need champagne. Immediately."

Rey snorts at the request but one of the Seamster's busybody helpers leaps from the dais where Rey has been imprisoned and produces an entire bottle along with three flutes. Virya takes the bottle as if it were her birthright. She holds it by its narrow neck, peels golden foil away with perfectly manicured nails, and does something to make the cork pops. She pours a full glass for herself, foam fizzling up to kiss the rim of the flute before dying back down.

"Favorite drink by the way. If you ever see it on a menu, it's pronounced 'sham-_pain_'. Not 'cham-pagh-neh'."

"I know what champagne is."

"Well, cheers to that." Virya raises her glass to Rey in a sarcastic toast, then downs the drink.

Rey clenches her hand, which the helpers have just finished measuring, into a very tight fist. She aches for a light saber, mutters, "I'm going to fucking kill you, Ben Solo."

"What was that?" Seamster's liquid, globular eyes swing before Rey's face. "Say something? Are you uncomfortable? Hungry? Dehydrated? Need some water? Something stronger?"

Over the last five hours, Rey has grown accustomed to how the Seamster speaks. One thought slung out after the other, like his perpetually moving hands. Even now, with his two central eyes staring at her, his arms continue moving, stretching, tucking, snipping and sewing fabric around her body, as if his head and limbs were separate units. Rey has the uneasy feeling she is being spun into a very expensive web.

"No thanks. It's been five hours already. How much longer is this going to take?"

"Nearly done with the first session."

"_First_? How many are there?"

That wide, hanging smile makes her spine prickle. "As many as it takes to make you perfect."

"We don't have nearly that long," Virya interjects. "Ren wants her ready in a few days. She needs to practice dancing in it too." Virya clasps her flute in slender fingers, which is full again. Somehow, she makes the flute elegant just by the way she holds it, like a sparkling extension of the line of her wrist.

"Enjoying yourself?" Rey asks dryly. She fights the urge to itch her scalp, which has been covered by a '_hair net'_ for when they put on the '_lace front'_. Whatever those are.

Virya gives Rey a drop dead gorgeous smile, her features bordering on angelic. "Like a hole in the head, darling."

Rey holds the other woman's gaze. If she weren't pinned up on this dais like a glorified butterfly, she could show Virya Vorian a hole in the head.

Virya works quickly through the second glass of champagne, then pours herself another. After the third, she uncrosses her long legs and glides over to the dais where Rey is being pinched, tucked, and turned. She sweeps lush, blonde waves over her shoulder and looks at Rey with a disturbingly clinical eye.

"Lower on the neckline," she says. "My gowns are always tailored to accentuate my decolletage."

"Your what?"

But the Seamster nods and, in a precise flash, slices a the fabric between Rey's breasts. The new neckline plunges down to the inverted V of her rib cage, exposing the inner curves of Rey's cleavage.

"What the-!" Rey moves to cover herself.

Two of the helpers lunge to restrain her, keeping her arms spread out to either side so they can continue measuring the angles of her palms. Virya rolls her eyes at the outburst and turns toward the wall of mirror to inspect her own reflection, an eye toward her own cleavage. The Seamster is looking at Rey with what she thinks is disapproval. A set of his secondary arms grasps her shoulders.

"Now, now, Miss Rey. This will only take longer if you insist on clinging to modesty."

"It's less about modesty," Rey grinds out, "and more about dignity."

Virya laughs, bubbly and effervescent as the champagne in her glass. Rey wants to punch her. Badly. She tries to say so with her glare as the woman turns back to study her again.

"Better. She's going to need breast implants though."

The Seamster claps his two largest hands together. "Now _that's _an idea."

"That's it," Rey says. "We're done here."

"But it's a very quick procedure," the Seamster says. "The scars would heal over in a matter of-"

"No, no, no, and _no_." Rey shakes the helpers off this time, ignoring their squeaking protests. One tumbles down the steps of the dais and lands at Virya's feet. Virya delicately side-steps, as if the helper were covered in mud.

Rey starts marching toward the door, dragging what feels like sixty pounds of fabric behind her, tripping when it bunches beneath her feet.

"Oh, come now," Virya takes a smug sip, watching Rey's slow progress across the room. "It would be an improvement. And for free, no less."

Rey gestures rudely to the beautiful, insufferable woman, who she has no interest in becoming. The motion dislodges a spray of tiny pins. A loop of fabric falls from beneath her tricep. The helpers wail.

"I don't care if someone notices I'm a fraud." Rey snaps, pulling the '_hair net'_ from her scalp. She is only a few steps from the door now. "I am not, under any circumstances, getting breast - "

The door slides open. A_ woosh_ of cold air dives down Rey's plunging neckline.

"…implants."

Ben walls off her exit, surprised to see her there. He looks down at her face and then, Rey _sees_ it, his gaze flutter a little further down before yanking back up to meet hers. Rey flushes.

"What did you just say?" he asks.

Rey crosses her arms, half in defiance, half in — what had the Seamster called it? Oh, right. Modesty. "I'm not getting breast implants. I'm telling you that right now. There is no way that's happening. Ever."

Ben looks up from Rey to the Seamster. A shadow falls over his face. The door slides closed behind him and suddenly the room is like a cage. "And how," Ben asks, voice chilling, "did this subject even come up for discussion?"

"Well, um," the Seamster says, clasping his primary hands together. "You see… the overarching sentiment was… "

"She's lacking in that department," Virya supplies smoothly. "Comparatively speaking." She crosses a slender forearm over her own full breasts to tip the last of the champagne into her flute, finishing off the bottle.

Ben ignores Virya. He steps around Rey and toward the Seamster, taking the three steps up onto the dais until he is looming over the creature. "I thought I made this abundantly clear in your contract. But since there seems to be some confusion, allow me to revisit."

His voice is low and laced in shadow. And Rey sees so much Kylo in him, she almost takes his arm to tell him to stop.

"Use your legendary tailoring skills. Use all the makeup in your arsenal. Use face paint if you have to. But if you so much as nick her, if I see even the slightest trace of blood on her body that wasn't there before she came to you, then I will take whichever the offending arm that held the blade and I will feed it into a fucking meat grinder. Do you understand me?"

"Y-yes. My Lord." Seamster's dark, liquid eyes are skittering in their sockets.

Ben steps back down, straightening. "Good."

Virya sighs loudly. "I really don't see what the issue is. It's just a standard boob job."

"Virya," Ben warns.

And because Virya is possibly drunk, or believes herself to be untouchable, she continues anyway. "All we'd be doing is bumping her up a cup size or two. Hardly anything worth being dramatic about."

"_Virya_."

"We'd be doing her a favor, really. Clearly, her parents didn't love her enough to pay for optimal gene selec-"

"That's _enough_!" Ben roars.

And whether he would have flown into violence or not, the room would never know. Because at the words _'her parents didn't love her'_, something in Rey snaps. Red floods her vision. The Force writhes in her like a feral animal, tearing into her insides. Rey gathers it up and shoves it at Virya's sitting chair, trying to throw it to the ground to splinter at her feet. To finally make her _shut up_.

She misses.

The Force collides with the wall of mirrors by the dais, sinking into it, absorbing into the molecular, crystalline structure for half a moment. Then, the whole thing explodes. Glass streaks in a slicing rain, the room shining.

Rey feels the eruption within the Force, within _her, _and realizes what she's done. A lapse in control. The entire room in harms way. Her fault.

Rey grasps what Force she has left and flings a net around the glass, every shard of it she can sense, every bit of it she can reach. It isn't all of them. And she doesn't have the control to suspend them, as a better Jedi might have, but she thinks she can manage to channel them. If she tugs just right, she can funnel the hurdling shards toward herself and away from the rest of the room. She tugs on the net and prays it is enough.

Ben throws her up against the wall and covers her body with his own.

It only lasts a moment. The hard contact of his body pressed along hers. His hand on the crown of her head, tucking her face into his chest. The dip of Ben's sternum on her mouth. The smell of molten steel and the sea.

The shock of it, and of the explosion, slices through her.

Ben keeps her close for another moment, waiting for the tinkling of glass to go still. Then he lifts his head, dark eyes searching her. "Alright?" he asks.

"Yes." Rey nods. There is no pain anywhere.

"What the _fuck_!" shrieked from the other side of the room

Virya is standing exactly where she had been before, still holding the stem of her champagne, which now ends in a jagged edge instead of a smooth curve. A line of blood runs from her temple down her cheek. Another stems from her kneecap, streaking her calf and falling into her shoe.

Rey scans the woman's body, looking for any further damage. Aside from the two cuts, Virya looks largely unscathed. Rey nearly sighs in relief.

"_You_," Virya gasps, "_fucking lunatic!_"

Rey looks next to the Seamster. He stands perfectly still on his dais, as if by being motionless, no one will notice him. His helpers huddle behind him, peeking around his sides. Dark ichor drips from a gash in his primary left arm. Other than that, there are no other visible wounds.

Rey looks around the bend of Ben's chest and sees what looks like the majority of the glass heaped at his ankles. She hadn't gotten everything, but she'd gotten enough. Later, she might even be proud.

The bathroom door slides open, revealing Leia in her hover chair. The General, dressed her political debate suite, takes in the scene. The Seamster like a statue on the dais, Virya with blood running down her cheek and leg, the spray of glass all over the floor. Her gaze lingers on her son, one hand pressed flat against the wall, and Rey looking small between him and it.

"You two, get out."

Rey thinks Leia must be talking to Virya and the Seamster, but the General just keeps staring at her and Ben.

Leia tips her head toward the door. "Go on," she says. "Out. Before you make any more of a mess."

Chastised, Rey slides out from under Ben's arm and steps around Leia, grabbing her clothes from the chair by the door. Leia doesn't look at Rey as she slips past. Ben follows, tall and silent on her heels. The door slides shut behind him. Rey feels thoroughly chastised.

"That was a little dramatic," Ben says.

Rey glances at him. She doesn't have the courage to say it was an accident. What would he think if he knew how lost she'd become in the Force? And then another, darker thought. Would he ever try to take advantage of it?

"I wasn't the one who started talking about a meat grinder," she deflects.

"You have to be very… direct with the Seamster. He has a tendency to forget things in his enthusiasm. Sometimes, you just need to paint a very clear picture for him."

"Uh huh," Rey says. Ben doesn't acknowledge her pointed stare.

"So, how was your shopping trip?" Rey asks, reaching for something more normal to hide how shaken she feels.

"Moderately successful."

"Did you get a ship or not?"

"Of sorts."

"Can I see it?"

"When it's ready. Black markets take a few days to deliver."

"I thought we only had a few days."

"True."

Rey feels restless. She wants to tear the yards of cloth hanging from her body. She wants to taste freedom. She wants an alternative to this stupid plan. But she knows she isn't likely to get what she wants. "So, where to next?" she asks drearily. "Let me guess. Waltz lessons?"

"Do you feel like waltzing?"

She laughs. "No. I feel like hitting something."

Ben considers for a moment, then asks, "Does the resistance armory have any training sabers?"

Rey's breath catches. "Yes. Why?"

"If you're going to hit something," Ben says, "it might as well be me."

"Really?" Rey asks, hardly able to believe it.

"Try not to sound so excited."

"But the prospect is just so exciting."

"First, I need your help with something."

"What?" She'd do almost anything if it meant she could take a few swings at him afterward.

"There's half a mirror in my back."


	8. Heaps of Broken Things

Ben can't go to the medical wing, for obvious reasons, which leaves him in the care of Rey and whatever tools she can scrounge up. She finds tweezers, a lighter for sterilizing, a flashlight, a full water canteen and a bowl from the mess hall. She checks everywhere for a surgical needle and thread but the closest thing she finds is duct tape. She slides the roll over her wrist like a bracelet, hoping they won't need it.

They meet in the belly of the ship, in the same empty storage room of their interrupted waltz.

Ben slides the door open and eyes contents of her bag. "Wow. I don't know whether to be worried or impressed." He raises a brow at the duct tape bracelet. "Leaning toward the former."

"You should be impressed. May I remind you that I was a literal scavenger before all this began."

"Oh, I'm well aware."

Rey remembers how he'd rifled through her mind in his ship. And how she, terror jerking into fury, had then shoved her way right back into his. At the time, they'd both just thought she'd been unexpectedly strong with the Force, but now Rey wonders if even then their bond had been connecting them, letting them slip inside each other's minds with ease. If she tried to read him now, she'd find nothing. The idea bothers her, more than it should. Rey swallows hard.

"Find a seat and take your shirt off."

Ben finds a steel crate and sits, peeling the tattered shirt from his body. Rey slides the door's deadbolt and shutters the small window. She doesn't even want to imagine the kinds of questions anyone would have if they walked in on this.

#

It takes an hour to pick out all the glass. Ben sits shirtless on an empty crate, forearms braced on knees, head lowered, keeping perfectly still. Rey works slowly and clumsily. She knows the First Order had droids for this and that she must be an excruciating stand in. She apologizes over and over at first, but Ben says nothing, silently presenting her with his glass studded back.

"Good thing your pants are lined with kevlar," Rey says softly, half thinking aloud. "_That_ would've been awkward."

Ben exhales sharply and Rey freezes, thinking she's hurt him. Then she realizes it was a laugh. She smiles, proud that she's coaxed amusement from him in the midst of this torture.

"Weird, though. How when we're down here, one of us is always shirtless."

Ben coughs and starts to straighten, but Rey stops him by pressing a knuckle into the nape of his neck. "Wait, I see another one." She gets her tweezers around a long fragment and dislodges it, guiding the pink, glistening shard from his skin. She drops it along with the rest into the bowl from the mess hall. She has collected quite a little heap of shards.

"Ok. That might have been the last one." Rey shines the flashlight over him, looking for any glimmering or irregular edges. She cringes as she steps back, taking in the view. His back is a bloody mess.

"I can't be sure," she admits. "There's a lot of blood." Still holding the flashlight, she reaches for the water flask. "This will be cold," she warns, then douses him. Pink rivulets stream down his back, but fresh blood wells up faster than Rey can rinse away. The act does nothing to give her a better look inside the wounds.

Rey sets down the bottle and rests her fingertips on top of his shoulders. "I'm going to see if I can feel anything."

She pauses, giving him the chance to shrug her off. When he doesn't, Rey starts to run her fingers down the length of Ben's back.

The Force seeps out unbidden, passing from her hands and into his wounds.

Ben stiffens. Rey freezes, trying to clamp down on the Force, the glass explosion fresh in her mind. But Force slips out like water, flowing from her hands and into Ben, even when she retracts her fingers an inch from his back. It's as if it has a mind of its own. And it isn't the violent thing it was before, in Leia's bathroom. The Force is soft and gentle this time, almost a caress.

Rey watches as Ben's skin knits together, expunging a few glass shards she'd missed. Swallowing her nerves, Rey puts the pads of her fingers back on his skin and trails down the line of him, marking a path for the Force. She grazes over the sloping angles of his shoulder blades, along the trench of his spine. When she reaches the taper of his waist, she turns her palms and does a second pass upward, skimming Ben's obliques and dorsal muscles.

Shards slip from Ben's body like drips from a faucet. When Rey reaches his shoulders, the Force ebbs, disentangling itself from her fingers. The shards drift on an invisible current into the bowl, clinking like rain. And then, the Force is gone. No explosions. No ruptures. Nothing broken, jagged, or bleeding. Rey sags in relief, bracing herself on Ben's wide frame. A small part of her notices how large Ben's shoulders are in her palms. And that's new, because Rey has always had big hands, for a girl, but even if she splays her fingers as wide as they can go, she can't even come close to holding all of him in her grip.

She coughs and stands upright, dropping her hands to her sides. "Done."

Ben stands up to his full height. He arches his back and rolls his shoulders experimentally. He brings one arm across his chest and then the other, making a vertical bar with his opposite forearm to aid the stretch. Rey starts to snap at him to put a shirt on, then realizes he can't.

"Amazing." Ben turns to her with mild astonishment and gratitude.

Rey shrugs. "Least I could do." _After you used yourself as a shield for me. _

Ben is still stretching, bending his torso left and right. Defined muscle flexes and fans over his tall frame. Rey averts her eyes, heat playing at the corners of her ears.

Ben reaches for the training saber propped against the wall. It flips easily in his hands, its blade is a light-weight aluminum, mimicking the weightlessness of a real light saber.

"Really?" Rey asks. "You don't want to take a rest or something?"

"No." Ben swings a rapid figure eight. Rey notices the Force took the bruise Finn put under his eye as well. When he looks at her, Ben is almost boyish. Happy. "I feel great."

His brightness is infectious, making Rey feels light and fresh again. Smiling, she reaches for the other training saber.

#

Sparring with Ben is unlike any training Rey has experienced. For once, she doesn't need to check herself for fear she might injure her partner. And that is something she's been missing more than she'd ever realized. With Ben, Rey is free to give her all. It is a challenge both physical and mental, but Rey _likes_ rising to meet it, exhilarated by the exertion. And while she can never, ever let her guard down, she does manage to find a subtle synchronicity in the movements, like shared breathing. After about an hour or so, once she has the rhythm mastered, she starts to tweak it, a change here and there to take him by surprise.

A tweak turns into a dozen, and soon they are going all out. Ben catches, parries, and glances most of her blows. And Rey dodges, dances, and spins away from most of his. Rey is quicker and less structured, more creative. But Ben is stronger more practiced, and patient. When his blows do land, they buzz through her body, making her limbs flash numb with his shattering strength. When Rey makes contact on him, it is almost always somewhere fatal. Ben's lip curls in a kind of feral grin. He stands and spins his saber, his dark eyes alight. Then they go at each other again.

Sweat slicks Rey's body. The muscles in her arms are liquid fire. She doesn't even know how long they've been doing this, but Rey feels vibrant, like her whole is body singing. Alive.

Ben blocks her swing, and its like punching a stone wall with a bare fist. Rey drops her saber, pretending to lose her grip, then dives at the last second, catching the hilt to swing at his knees. Ben falls back into a kneel to guard at the last moment.

"Damn you," he pants, half laughing. "Don't you ever-"

Rey shoots up, swinging her saber up overhead for a down-stroke. Ben's saber flashes, a shield. He deflects her with a cross swing, pushing Rey off balance, throwing her arms back upward. Ben surges, one-handedly catching Rey's wrists together over her head.

"Don't you ever follow the rules?" he finishes, squeezing.

"Never heard of 'em," Rey grins.

Ben's smile deepens, then fades a little as he notices their closeness. His grip loosens, then skims down her forearm and over her elbow. His palm glides over her shoulder, fingers brushing the back of her neck. He could strangle her, Rey realizes dimly. But from the way his expression changes, she knows that he won't. She thinks he might kiss her, and then thinks she might let him. Her breath catches. She knows there is a heap of untouched problems still between them, amassing like a dune. But right now, with Ben's hand cradling the back of her neck, and the heat of his body an inch from hers, Rey can't bring herself to mention one of them.

Ben hesitates, as if waiting for permission, then he lowers his face toward hers. But he doesn't meet her mouth. Instead, Ben lowers his forehead onto Rey's shoulder. He inhales deeply, like he's trying to bottle her scent inside his chest. When he can't hold it in any longer, he releases a long sigh. His body grows a little heavier. Rey can practically feel him cooling against her.

When he straightens again, his expression is more controlled. "Enough." He takes a step back from her, leaving her cold.

There is a splinter in Rey's chest, aching so acutely, she feels like she could pinpoint exactly where it sits beneath the skin. Before she can stop Ben from pulling farther away — ask him _what_ exactly is enough — the clang of the dead bolt sliding open interrupts her.

Rey spins, raising her saber. Then she realizes there's only one person in the base has enough control over the Force to open the dead bolt from the outside. Rey relaxes slightly, but her relief is short lived, because Leia halts abruptly when she sees them, looks from Rey to Ben and back again. Her expression is stern.

"What in the Force have you two been doing?"

"Nothing," Rey says, quick as a youngling with her hand in the sweet jar.

Ben flicks a glance her way. Rey flushes. Even she can hear how guilty she'd sounded.

"Just sparring," she clarifies.

"Sparring?" Leia arches a brow and floats the rest of the way into the room. The door shuts and the deadbolt slides closed. "That's it? Nothing else?"

"Nothing else," Ben confirms. "You look skeptical."

"I am skeptical."

"Why?"

"Because for the first time in a very long time, the Force seems to have regained some semblance of balance within each of you. So I'll ask you one more time. What have you been doing?"

"Honestly, Leia, we were just-"

"What do you mean, regained balance?" Ben asks, a bit harsher than Rey has ever heard anyone speak to Leia. But the General replies, equally harsh.

"Exactly that. The two of you have been grossly imbalanced in the Force for a while now. Did you think I hadn't noticed? Rey has been tilting since she came back from Exegol. And you haven't been in your proper Force state since you came to me three weeks back. You are both… discordant."

Rey looks at Ben. Then it hits her, hard like a meteor impact. "The bond," she whispers. "You broke it."

Ben shoots her a warning glance, curbing her from saying anything further.

But Leia doesn't miss a beat. "What bond?"

Ben holds out for a moment, then seems to realize his mother won't let him get away without an explanation. He sighs and rests the training saber against the wall.

"Our bond," he answers. "Rey and I are… _were_ a dyad."

Leia stares at her son. It is the first time, Rey thinks, that she has seen the General shocked speechless.

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"Because it doesn't matter anymore," Ben says.

Rey's jaw clenches. His nonchalance stings, even when he doesn't mean it to.

"Doesn't matter?" Leia is incredulous. "Ben, do you have any idea what a Force dyad means? How powerful-"

"Yes, mother. I'm aware. But it doesn't matter because we aren't a dyad anymore. I severed our bond in Exegol."

And then, because Rey knows that Ben won't say it himself, she adds quickly, "He did it to save my life."

Leia blinks, then looks from Rey to Ben. Her expression softens from anger into something sad. "Oh my son. My foolish boy. What have you done?"


	9. That's Not How the Force Works

"Breaking a dyad is no simple act." A few hours later, Rey, Ben and Leia sit around the same small hearth where Rey first learned that Ben was still alive. It is a small, cozy space, but Rey has come to associate it with her world being shaken. She listens to Leia with a knot of anxiety in her core. "Dyads," Leia continues, "are one of the strongest, rarest, and most complex bonds within the Force. And based on your description, yours seemed particularly strong. It's unlikely that Ben was able to break it completely."

"But we can't find each other anymore," Rey says. "The connection is gone."

"What exactly do you mean by '_gone_'?" Leia presses. "If you tried reaching for each other now, how would you describe the experience?"

Rey hesitates. Something sneers a low growl inside her, an instinct all hackles and fangs. It feels wrong, talking about their bond with someone who existed outside of it. A kind of betrayal. Rey glances at Ben. From his dark and guarded expression, she can tell he feels the same. Someone outside of their dyad, someone _other_, should not be allowed to touch what was theirs.

"I can guess what you're thinking," Leia says. "An outsider couldn't possibly understand a dyad's bond. Of course, that's true. I can't know what it was like to have what you had, nor to lose what you've lost. But let me in even a little, and I might be able to help you both more than you could imagine. If not for yourselves, consider letting me in for each other's sakes."

Rey's mouth is so dry, she has to swallow before she can speak. "It hurts. When I reach for our bond now, it's like pressing a broken tooth or like… dragging my mind over a saw. It feels jagged inside."

Rey looks to Ben for assurance. He catches her glance and nods, mouth resting on his fist. It is a slight but reassuring gesture.

"Painful," Leia surmises.

Just 'painful' feels like a gross understatement, but Rey has no better word for it.

"Good. If it still hurts, it isn't gone. There may still be hope."

Leia's words smash over them. Rey's mind swims in shock. Ben sits up straighter, his fist falling away from his mouth.

"Consider it," Leia says, in response to their stunned expressions. "What no longer exists, cannot cause any pain. The shared bond between you may now be a shared wound, but that doesn't mean it's been wiped out of existence. If there were nothing left, I'd expect you to feel exactly that: nothing."

Ben finds words again first. "Are you saying it can be repaired?"

"I'm saying lets not rule it out. Some wounds heal. Others never do. And this _is_ a severe wound. It's possible you two will share nothing more than a mutual pain for the rest of your lives. It's also possible that some portion of the bond may be healed over time. But keep in mind that _healed_ doesn't mean fully restored. I doubt it will ever be the same as it was."

Rey is still swimming in her shock, but a question tugs inside her. What would be better? A shared pain they'd each stow away and try to never touch? Or living with some partial remnant of their bond, knowing it would never be the same as what they'd shared before?

"The trouble with dyads is their rarity," Leia continues. "Scholars of the Force don't have very much to study, so there's much we don't understand. But I can make a few guesses as to what's happened here, based on what I've sensed in both of you.

"Ben tried to take the dyad's power to restore Rey's life. In doing so, he displaced a great amount of Force energy meant to be shared between the two of you and put it entirely on Rey's shoulders. This created a three-part imbalance. First, imbalance in the dyad itself. Your bond is wounded, its fabric torn by the unnatural exchange. Because of this, you can't find each other on the other side of it. All you find instead is pain. But I suspect it is a _shared_ pain, one that it feels exactly the same to both of you because it is something that lives between you. Just because you cannot find each other within it, doesn't mean you are alone when you go to that painful place."

Rey glances toward Ben. She can hear the memory of his voice as clearly as she can feel that first butterfly touch of his fingers on hers.

_You're not alone._

"That's the first damage. But it doesn't stop there. In addition to the dyad as an entity being wounded, the individuals that made up its two halves were also impaired. Ben took every part of the Force that he could touch and shoved it into Rey, essentially giving up his own identity within the Force."

"Wait, what?" Rey interrupts. "What does that mean?"

Leia looks to her son, asks him gently, "Do you want to tell her or should I?"

Ben sighs in resignation. "How long have you known?"

"I only suspected until today. After the mirror, I knew."

"But the mirror was me," Rey interjects. "That was my fault. Ben didn't have anything to do with it."

"Precisely," Leia confirmed. "When faced with that explosion, he used his body as a shield. He didn't use the Force to contain it or redirect it, as you yourself did on pure instinct. My son, who was practically swaddled in the Force at birth, and then dedicated his life to its mastery, didn't even reach for it in a moment of crisis."

"That's because if I had, nothing would have happened." Ben's voice is deceivingly steady, but his gaze is anchored to the carpet under his feet. "I have been… cut off from the Force."

Rey's brain stalls over his words. She searches his face. "But," she says haltingly, "that can't be."

It is a terrible first thing to say. But her mind cannot form any other thought. It's a misunderstanding. It must be. It is unimaginable that Ben, a titan in the Force, could be stripped of it. It would be like losing a limb, his hearing, or his sight. It would be crippling for him.

"I thought it was temporary at first," Ben says. "I thought if I waited long enough, it would return to me. But the Force is only a drip inside me now. A leak. If I focus, I can store it up inside, a little every day. But even then, it's only ever enough to do small, useless things." Ben points to Leia's tea set in the corner of the room. "If I were to lift one of those tea bags an inch off the tray, for example, it would set me back by weeks."

"Try," Leia says.

"What?"

"The teabag. Try lifting it an inch off the table."

"I just told you. It would take me weeks to recover the -"

"Ben," Leia says, suddenly a mother speaking patiently to her child.

Ben gives Leia a long, unhappy look. Then, Rey sees him try to reach for the Force, clearly not expecting anything. The teabag lifts from the tray. It rises an inch, then two, then six. Ben's hard expression melts. The kettle joins the tea bag, then the nectar jar, next the entire tray. Soon the entire set is levitating, twirling lazy pirouettes.

Ben laughs. It is a wonderful sound, relieved and disbelieving.

Leia is smiling, warm with maternal pride.

And Rey thinks, with just the barest taint of bitterness, that she is glimpsing a family. She thinks of burying Luke's saber on Tatooine, and how she'd claimed the name Skywalker, with Leia's permission. It had seemed so right at the time. When Leia had formally consented, Rey had felt a surge of pride. Now, watching Luke's sister and nephew, Rey wonders what made her think she'd had the right?

Shame stirs inside her. How would Ben, the true blood of Skywalker, react if he knew she'd presumed to consider herself a part of his family? It wasn't as if she'd brought down Palpatine alone. She'd done it together with Ben. And when she'd died, _he_ had made the sacrifice to save her.

With soft clinks, the tea tray settles back onto the side table, arranged exactly as it had been before.

"Its not back," Ben's voice is still an excited rush. "Not the way it was. But there is so much more than there has been for months. I feel connected for the first time again. I don't understand why. Or how…"

"When I came upon you two just now, I sensed the Force had re-balanced between you. Not fixed, but temporarily improved. Which is why I'll ask you one more time. What were you doing down there? Was it really just sparring?"

Rey flushes at Leia's raised brows. "Yes. We were really just-"

"No."

Rey turns to Ben, shocked. He is staring at her, oblivious to the awkwardness blossoming in the room.

"You healed me," he says. "You used the Force."

"Well, yes. How else was I supposed to…" And then it hits her too. The way the Force had flowed unbidden from Rey's fingertips into Ben's wounds, almost like returning home. The way they had both felt so _right_ afterward, ready to spar and play, when they should have been exhausted. They'd been balanced again.

"Is that how the Force works?" Rey asks. "Can we pass it to each other like that?"

"Not normally. Force sharing is only supposed to be possible within the walls of the Jedi temples, and only after a great deal of training. But it may be easier for a dyad."

"Then can we keep doing it? If it balances the Force, shouldn't we try?"

"Not only should you," Leia says, "but for Rey's sake, I think you_ must_."

Rey and Ben pause.

"What do you mean, for her sake?"

Leia sighs, as if she hadn't wanted to get to this part. "The third imbalance you created in Exegol. First was tearing the dyad bond itself. Second was cutting Ben off from the Force. Third and lastly, is Rey. If Ben has been cut off from the Force, Rey is absolutely brimming with it. Be honest with us now, Rey. You've been struggling to control it recently, haven't you?"

Rey starts to deny it, the survivor's instinct to hide any and all weakness rearing up inside. But if Ben admitted his vulnerability, Rey knows she will have to admit hers too. "Yes," she forces the admission like a stone through her lips. "I've been struggling to control the Force. And lately, I've been losing. The mirror today wasn't intentional. And it wasn't just because I was angry. I… I lost control. It felt like a dam breaking inside me. I couldn't do anything to stop it."

There. She'd admitted it. Just as Ben had studied the carpet during his confession, Rey is finding it impossible to raise her eyes. She is acutely aware of Ben and Leia watching her.

"It's only natural that you'd struggle," Leia says gently. "You are carrying far more than any individual should. I've tried sending you to this moon's Jedi temple to find balance. But the lunar pool never seemed to do anything for you. I was just starting to think we'd need to find a new temple. If we can't find a way to dissipate the immense Force energy you're harboring, incidents like today will only become more frequent. Then they'll grow worse. I fear you will become a serious danger, not only to those around you, but to yourself."

Rey tries to absorb Leia's words. The past three months come together with chilling clarity, how difficult even simple Force exercises have been for her lately. Boulders careening and shattering in basic obstacle courses. A rain of glass and Ben's back studded with glass.

Beside her, Ben goes into full interrogation mode. "What sort of danger? You mean difficult to handle or a fatal threat? When were you going to tell her?"

"Think of Rey's body like a star," Leia explains. "She is a vessel that is perpetually balancing and controlling the energy within her. But she's carrying far too much now. If she cannot find a way to reduce it… well, are you familiar with the concept of a supernova?"

Rey _is _familiar with the concept, though right now she wishes she wasn't. A star glutted on energy. Nuclear fusion disrupting its core. Gravity itself wobbling, chewing at the star's internal structures. And then, collapse. An explosion of heat and light so immense, it is comparable to that of an entire galaxy. Darkness and oblivion stretching for entire systems in its wake.

"I'll explode?" Rey asks. Her voice sounds surprisingly calm.

"The Force will eventually become too great for you to contain. You and everything around you would be subsumed."

Something sings in Rey's mind. She feels that she is tipping backward from the world, slipping into a numbing fog. She realizes dimly that Ben and Leia are still speaking, though she struggles to focus on the exchange.

Ben sounds angry.

" - but this isn't a permanent solution?"

"I'm afraid not. Rey will always be shouldering more of the Force than she is able to bear, and you will always be starving for it. Unless we can find a way to repair the dyad bond _itself_, you will both naturally revert to that state. Force sharing will be like bailing water out of a sinking ship until we can repair the leak."

"So what? Her life is in danger every day until our bond is re-balanced, and you want us to work on Force sharing? A treatment you can't even guarantee will be sufficient? We should focused on the _bond. _Researching dyads, not wasting time relying on half-assed solutions."

"We will be researching dyads, Ben." Leia tries to reason with the storm mounting in her son. "But as I said, we just don't have much to work with. Finding an answer is going to take time."

"What if we don't have any time?" Ben stands. He runs a hand through his black hair. "I could try to take it all back from her. Reverse what I did in Exegol. If I -"

"No_,_" Leia cuts him off. "The stunt you pulled in Exegol was unimaginably reckless. Rey is managing to hold it together now, but it is a tenuous hold. Disrupt that tentative balance in any sudden or major way, and you could send her spiraling prematurely. For now, our best option is to have her pass a bit of the Force to others on a regular basis. You, me, and anyone else we can find who is Force sensitive. Then we can only hope that's enough to keep her stable until -"

"_That's not fucking good enough!_" Ben slams his fist onto the mantle. Something cracks. The sound startles Rey a little more into herself. He is a breath away from rage, the kind she hasn't seen from him since their first meetings.

Leia sees it too. Her eyes go cold. "Careful, Ben," she warns. "Do not allow fear and anger to draw you back into the darkness. We cannot afford to go through that again."

Ben is standing, looking at Leia like he's never seen her before. Like he might tear everything apart.

Rey realizes that while she is wrapped in a shell of comfortable shock, Ben is teetering on a ledge. One more step, and he will be gone again, down into a yawning pit of blackness that has all promises and no answers. The dark side. Rey reaches out and closes her hand on his.

"Ben."

He looks down at her, eyes savage. Rey can practically see snow flitting across his features, a black forest like a clutch of claws closing around him.

Rey squeezes his knuckles, too large in her hand. "I'll manage," she assures. "I'll be fine."

For a long moment, Rey thinks he is going to pull away from her, to sneer and storm from the room. Instead, he slowly sits back down in the chair beside hers. He takes a moment to collect himself, taking a long, deep breath. Then he turns back to Leia.

"Alright," he says, still holding Rey's hand like she is a tether to sanity. "Explain to us _exactly _what she needs to do."


	10. Off Balance

The next morning, Rey and Ben take a skimmer up the glacier to the Jedi's lunar temple, where the Force is meant to be at its strongest.

Ben is distant in his thoughts, a scowl lurking around his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. Rey lets him be. She is still reeling herself from last night's meeting with Leia. So they ride in silence, Rey guiding the skimmer along a hairline ledge of the ridge line. She races the sun as it rises, a golden soap bubble readying to burst over on the mountain tops.

_Super nova_, she thinks darkly.

When they reach the temple, Rey parks as close as she can to its alabaster arches, minimizing the distance they need to walk from the ship. They are on the highest peak of this mountainous moon of ice. The elements up here are at best unpleasant. At worst, deadly. The temple's arches are lined with icicles, gleaming in the new sun like many rows of pointed teeth.

Inside the temple, the lunar pool steams serenely. Lush, humid heat floods over them. They remove their heavy coats and boots, then pad over to the pool.

Rey finds the northern glyph and sits cross legged in its center. Ben passes, walking the perimeter to sit directly opposite her on the southern point. Thick steam obscures him until he is only a vagary of motion. Unlike when Rey came here alone, she does not step into the water. She doesn't even suggest it to Ben, who became somehow even more irritable as soon as she'd parked the skimmer. The way he'd glared at the pool's milky surface seemed to mirror Rey's own mistrust of it.

They perform the exercises as Leia instructed. Rey inhales, trying to center the Force within her, then exhales, feeding it out as far as she can across the milky waters and down the broken line of their bond. She extends until she brushes against the jagged edge, then holds it at the point of aching, an offering.

The temple is a natural amphitheater, with its still water and vaulted ceiling, and the sound of Rey's breath is as loud as the oceans of Kef Bi. Ben offsets his breaths against hers, an inhale for her exhale, and exhale for her inhale. On the other side of the pain, Rey knows that he is trying to catch the Force and draw it into himself with every inhale and seal it tight with every exhale.

After an hour, Rey feels lightheaded. There is an itch of her own sweat collecting on the bridge of her nose, mingling with the fragrant steam. She is trying to follow Leia's instructions, to find a rhythm of unity, but —

"This isn't working." Ben's voice skates across the water.

Rey cracks an eye. He is only a smudge of shadow veiled in pearly steam.

"I don't feel anything either," she admits.

They try for a few more cycles. Then they take up their coats, boots, and gloves and head back to the skimmer. At the arches, frigid air rakes their steam-softened skin. They stand at the threshold, waiting for the ship's ramp to lower, and Rey has to cross her arms to fight a shiver. Beside her, Ben is still lost in thought and seemingly unbothered by the cold.

"Maybe only works when you're healing an injury," he says absently.

"I don't think -"

But before she can finish, Ben strikes an icicle, snapping it from the arch and then stabbing it into his hand. He casually discards it, the spent weapon shattering on alabaster tile.

Rey stands speechless.

Ben peels off his glove. The blood is a startling scarlet against pale skin. He turns to her, his face calm. Rey doesn't know if she's more stunned at his complete lack of hesitation to hurt himself or the sudden efficiency with which he was able to do it. She wonders if it's the Jedi or the Sith that are responsible for that part of him.

He holds his bleeding hand out to her as if he is offering her a piece of fruit.

Rey spins on her heel and marches up the skimmer's ramp. By the time Ben climbs up and takes his seat beside her, she is already buckled into the pilot's chair. He holds his hand out to her again, though she pointedly stares straight ahead.

"Don't." Rey's voice is as cold as the wind outside.

"Why not? It might work."

"I am not having any part in that, Ben."

"Any part in what?" he asks, impatient.

"I'm not letting you turn me into another reason to hurt yourself."

Silence brittles between them, uncomfortable as foreign fingers brushing along a throat.

"Well," Ben says, "I'm bleeding already. So you may as well try it and see if it works. Please."

Rey glares at him. Ben holds his injured hand out to her with a look on his face like _she_ is being the unreasonable one. It is actually only a small puncture wound, deep but relatively harmless in the fleshy pad of his thumb. He tips his wrist and a droplet plops onto the control panel, splattering red. Rey hisses and grabs Ben's thumb to keep his blood out of the skimmer's sensitive electronics. Then she realizes she's been tricked. She clenches her jaw and squeezes hard on the wound_, _both to apply pressure and to let Ben know that she is angry and she means it.

They wait, glaring at each other. But the Force does not slip between them as it did in the storage room. When Rey finally releases him, her palm is slick and Ben's wound is still a black punctuation marring his hand.

"I'm serious," Rey says, ignoring the way her skin itches and sticks to the joystick. "Do something like that again and I'm done, Ben. Just… _done._"

"Doesn't work anyway," Ben mutters, bringing the pad of this thumb between his lips to suck the wound clean.

Rey keeps her gaze on the return route ahead. She is angry but mostly relieved Ben's idea hadn't worked. If it had, she doesn't know how she'd manage to stop him from going any farther.

#

"Where have you been?" Virya demands. She has a small, nude-colored film bandaging her cheekbone. There is no other evidence, physical or emotional, that the woman had nearly been shredded the day before.

Rey is glad to see the injuries aren't that serious. While Virya had been a royal pain over the last few days, she'd done nothing to deserve being sliced into ribbons. Yet.

"Training," Ben answers brusquely. "Sorry we're late."

"You will be," Virya holds up an interstellar comm device. "While you two were dallying, the Inner Circle has been active. The private channel has been live for two hours now."

"What?" Ben shoulders into the bathroom, taking the comm device from Virya. He ignores or misses the Seamster's visible flinch at his entrance.

Ben starts scrolling through the comm logs. Virya reads over his shoulder.

"What is it?" Rey asks, practically leaning on the doorway. She is too tired to elbow for a place around the small screen.

"They're moving up the auction," Ben says.

"What auction?"

"There's usually a fundraising auction held the same night as the ball. But they're making it a separate event. On a different day."

"It's a test," Virya says. "Rosshel's probably responsible. He runs the auctions. He'll have moved the date at the last minute to make it difficult for one of the other families to attend. Just another way to throw a rival off balance and cut them out of the game."

"Who does he want out?" Ben asks.

"Difficult to say. My father thinks -" Virya falters, her expression flickering so briefly, Rey almost thinks she's imagined it. "My father always thought Rosshel was after the Drakun. But I think that's an act to distract everyone from his real target. I have it on good authority that Rosshel hates Tannias. I bet he's trying to cut him out of the scene."

"How do you know all this?" Rey asks.

"Because that's my job. You think my father made me his right hand because I have a pretty face?"

Rey sighs. "I take it we have to go to this auction?"

"Yes," Ben and Virya reply in unison.

"Alright. When is it?"

Ben looks up at her. Virya smirks so smugly from over his shoulder that Rey already knows the answer.

"Tonight."

#

"Is she ready yet?" Ben's voice, deep and muffled, floats through the door.

"Not yet." Virya calls, leaning against the steel panel in case Ben loses patience and tries to push his way in. Rey can practically feel Ben fuming on the other side. For once, she can empathize perfectly.

"Almost," the Seamster is whispering. "Almost, almost. A touch here. A touch there. And, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…"

Rey's face feels cakey with paints, creams, and powders. Her scalp itches where her real hair has been pasted back into a _'hair net'. _The Seamster steps back to give her an appraising look.

Because there is no mirror, Rey hasn't been able to watch his progress. Instead, she glances at Virya to see what he is trying to create. Each time she does, the dread lining her stomach thickens. There is no way she will ever be that beautiful.

As if she knows what Rey is thinking, Virya catches Rey's eye and smirks. Her lips are a full, velvety red. The edges of her eyes are painted with delicate cat-eye wings, the black liner rimmed in gold, with a small, gold dot placed expertly just below the lower lashes.

The Seamster had spent the first hour watching Virya get dressed and do her own make up, insisting that having "the real thing" as a reference would be best. He'd hardly blinked as Virya swept her hair back into a low chignon, pulling a few pieces loose to artfully frame her jaw. She'd applied creams and powders to her already perfect face, making herself look briefly clownish in Rey's opinion, until suddenly it all came together to make her skin look smooth as cream. And then Virya Vorian was somehow, impossibly, even more beautiful that she had been before.

The outfit had been a second ordeal. At first Rey had thought it was a dress, but the bottom was actually a very loose pair of pants. It was one piece of structured black silk. It had bold shoulders a deep V-neck of glossy suit-lapels capped with a tall collar. Onyx buttons tracked down to the left side, bust to hip. The outfit ended in black, kitten-heeled boots with a pointed toe. The Vorian could have stepped into an intergalactic board room after arriving an hour late and still run the the whole show.

Rey, on the other hand, suspects that she herself looks ridiculous. She certainly _feels_ ridiculous. She only wishes she had a mirror so she could confirm it. One of the helpers clips a bracelet around her wrist, crusted in zafrites that match her suit buttons. Another slides expensive rings onto her fingers in stacks.

Once the Seamster seems satisfied with her makeup, he snaps a set of his fingers toward a chair that is piled with what looks like human scalps.

"Bring me the Annette." The eyes that are oriented toward Virya squint slightly. "And the Penelope as well."

A helper picks two blonde scalps off of the pile and scurries over to him. The Seamster holds both up to frame either side of Rey's face. If there's a difference between them, she can't see it.

He picks one, discarding the other into a helper's waiting arms, and tacks it onto Rey's hairline. The weight is strange. She feels tresses brushing along her triceps and resists the urge to smack a bug. Without even coming to stand behind her, the Seamster uses his long arms to sweep the blonde wig back in a copy of Virya's hairstyle.

"Alright," he says, stepping back and clapping each of his hands together. "We're done." He looks to the helpers, who are standing perfectly still, admiring the finished product. "Well? Someone bring that mirror over here. Snip snip."

It takes four helpers to carry over the free-standing mirror. They set it down at an angle in front of the dais and Rey notices that Virya has crossed the room to stand behind her. She shoots a scowl over her shoulder, then blinks when she finds no one there. She turns back to the mirror and so does Virya's reflection. Rey frowns, opening her mouth to ask a half-formed question. In the mirror, Virya's reflection opens her mouth as well, crimson lips parting as her perfectly shaped brows tug down faintly.

Rey blinks, realizing it is not Virya's reflection in the mirror, but her own.

Her mind stutters, struggling to believe it. When she stares, she can see it's not a perfect copy. The reflection's nose is slightly sharper than the real Virya's, the jaw a touch less delicate, and the lips a little less full. But it isn't Rey either. It is a much more beautiful creature, who tracks Rey's every breath. The only thing that helps Rey bridge the woman in the mirror to her own concept of self is the fact she looks as stunned as Rey feels. It is the most beautiful she's ever felt in her life, but also, somehow the least like herself.

Ben steps in behind her, his reflection giving him away. She turns to gauge his reaction directly, feeling acutely vulnerable. He is not as stunned as she expects. He looks at her with a strange distance in his eyes, his expression tighter and colder than usual.

"It will do," he says.

Rey's head spins. Is he unsatisfied? How could he possibly be unhappy with this_… _this _miracle_ of a transformation? This transplant of beauty onto the shabby, sand-scavenger turned novice Jedi?

Virya steps beside Ben, slender arms crossed in scrutiny. "If possible, try to appear less stupefied. It rather detracts from the illusion."

"We have to go soon," Ben says, glancing at a comm device in his pocket. "Are you ready?"

_No,_ Rey replies mentally. _Absolutely _not_. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've only had a few days to prepare. I couldn't run in these shoes if I needed to save my life. We're going to get caught on this stupid mission. And even if we don't, the Force could turn me into a bomb at any moment, obliterating me and also you if you're too close, and we still haven't talked about anything important… _

Instead, Rey shrugs. "Why not?" She binds the teeming thoughts together and drops them into the deepest well of her mind. She knows they're still there, and that they will rise again, but that will be another time.

For now, Ben holds out his arm and she takes it, stepping down from the dais.

"Wait." Virya takes Rey's shoulder. It's the first time the other woman has voluntarily touched her. Before Rey can raise her eyebrows in surprise, Virya steps in close and pins something into Rey's wig. Rey feels the sliding teeth of a hair comb. Attached to it's edge is a piece of sheer, black lace, which Virya flips down over Rey's eyes and nose. It is sheer enough to see and breathe through, yet rigid enough that it holds it shape and won't touch her makeup.

Rey lifts a quizzical brow. "What's this for?"

Virya rolls her eyes. "To help obscure your face, of course. It's a big improvement, make no mistake. But still. You're no me."

#

It is a strange feeling to walk through the base ship wearing another person's face. Rey tries to walk smoothly in the kitten heeled booties, to stop herself from brushing the foreign blonde tresses away from her jawline. For now, she has flipped the little piece of lace up and out of her face so it sits like a bandanna atop her head. She holds her breath as the hanger's security system scans her thumb print and sighs when the lock opens to Leia's private docking slip. She had half expected the security system seize up and start blaring "FRAUD!" at top volume.

But when Rey steps inside the hangar, her relief vanishes. She halts, mouth falling open. Ben continues for a few strides before he realizes she's fallen behind. He half turns to look back at her.

"What," Rey chokes out, "is that?"

"What's what?"

"_That._" Rey points.

"That?" Ben looks back and forth between her finger and the object. "That's our ship."

Rey claps a hand over her mouth. Then she does a hobbling run the rest of the way to the matte black racing ship, kitten heels be damned. The closer she gets, the harder time she has believing it's real. "I thought you said you were _kind of _successful?"

"High standards, I guess."

Rey twists to gape at Ben. He shrugs.

Rey runs her hand along the side panel, her fingers gliding down sleek body lines.

"Do you like her?" Ben asks. And if Rey were less taken with the beautiful machinery before her, she might have heard the quiet hope in his voice.

"Like her? She's _beautiful_," Rey breathes, walking along the ship in wonderment. She cannot find a single seam on its perfectly finished exterior. The alumino-silicate windshield is tinted nearly black, with the faintest holographic gleam, like an insect wing caught in the light.

"I've never seen anything like it."

"That's because she's one of a kind."

"What do you mean?"

"I had her specially commissioned."

"You had her… isn't that difficult?"

"Not necessarily."

Rey pauses her admiration to look back at Ben. She'd raise her eyebrows at him, but she still can't quite reel her jaw back in. "And what happened to stealth being best for a covert mission?"

"Well, this kind of expense wouldn't be too out of character for the Vorians. Consider it part of your disguise. I did also have her coated in micro-stealth plates, just in case we need them."

"Doesn't that break inter-galactic safety regulations?"

Ben scoffs. "Yes. She breaks the whole regulatory handbook. If anyone tries to pull us over, you better be as good of a pilot as you think you are. Otherwise, they'll confiscate her on sight."

"Over my dead body," Rey laughs, running her fingertips back over the ship's velvety smooth surface. If she peers, she can barely make out the micro-millimeter honeycombs that, when run with the proper current, will render the ship nearly invisible in space. "I've got to show this to Poe. He's going to die of jealousy."

"Want to know the best part?"

Rey jumps. Ben has come to stand closer than she'd realized, nearly brushing her elbow. She'd been too distracted by the ship to notice.

"That colibri you had your heart set on? I had them compared. Guess which ship is faster?"

Rey's eyes widen. "No."

Ben rests his hand alongside Rey's on the ship. "This ship will leave any colibri in its stardust."

She stares in disbelief. "What's she called?"

"That's for you to decide."

"Me?"

"It's not like we give her back when this is over."

Rey's hand drops. She turns to face him properly. "Wait. Stop. What _exactly _are you saying to me right now. Are you saying… we get to keep her?"

He nods.

"Ben. Can I hug you?"

He blinks. "What?"

But Rey is already throwing her arms around his neck. He's tall, so she jumps for it. Elation alone is enough to launch her off her feet. Ben grunts softly and has to take a backward step to brace himself. Rey squeezes tight, hiding her grin in his shoulder, giddy that _something_ in the last twenty-four hours has finally has gone right.

"Thank you," she says, part muffled by his shoulder.

Ben's arms hover tentatively around her waist, as if hugging is new to him. Then his arms slide around her more firmly. She feels his body curve slightly into the touch. "You're welcome."


	11. What's for Sale?

**A/N:** Happy Tuesday! Have a chap where Rey goes completely rogue (rip ben)

If she closes her eyes, Rey can still smell the auction houses of Jakku. Oiled canvas tents crammed with bodies, heat, and dust. The musk of artifacts dredged up from sand. A dozen species all braying bids, too many living things and too little space. As a scavenger, she'd done her best to avoid auctions, only bringing in her rarest finds to drive up their price. Mostly, she stuck to junk stalls and flea markets, preferring to haggle with sharks one at a time rather than all at once.

But this auction will probably be nothing like Jakku's. Rey can already tell that much as she guides the unnamed racing ship onto a landing belt. She cuts the engine as the belt tows them up toward the docks. This docking process was designed to let the pilot and passengers admire the scenery below, a vast city-scape of glass and durasteel, washed golden in the dying light. The buildings are great spires, cloud needles tall enough to pierce the horizon. The twinkling lights below are so numerous, they rival the stars in the desert sky.

Rey has never seen a city of this size. It distracts her at first, until she thinks of all the people living on top of each other in the beautiful buildings she's admiring. The vague sense of claustrophobia only makes her more anxious about her own mission. She sits twitchy in her seat as the landing belt hums, drawing them up to the roof of one of the tallest sky scrapers.

I am so screwed, she thinks, clicking her kitten heels on the floor.

"Nervous?"

Rey glances at Ben sitting beside her. He is wearing black armor, complete with a bullet proof vest and kevlar-lined fabric. If he's trying to assure her that nothing would happen, his wardrobe alone is enough to put her on edge.

"What do you think? I'm obviously nervous."

"You've spent a lot of time with Virya in the last few days."

"Time isn't going to fix it. And neither will all this makeup. We I have nothing in common, Ben. And it won't take very long for someone who knows her at all to figure that out."

"You don't need to have anything in common," Ben says. "You know what kind of person she is. Don't try to recite every fact of her life. Think about the way she talks to people. The way she looks at them and how that makes them feel. If you get caught up worrying about what you look like to others, they'll catch on. Focus instead on how they would look to her."

It's good advice, actually. Really good. And an angle Rey hadn't considered before. But she is too nervous to admit that to him. Restless, she shifts in the seat, turning back to the golden city below to distract herself. As the sun sets, the shadows begin to thicken, long spindles running up the sides of the skyscrapers. The warm sun sinks, and a wash of cold electric lamps and red neon rises up to take its place.

"You should bid on something."

Rey blinks. "What?"

"At the auction. You should bid. It doesn't matter on what. Do it as a show of power. Remind them that just because she's the last Vorian, doesn't mean they can walk all over her."

Rey stares at Ben. She wonders if she has the same look Virya often does, a cold glare that asks, 'How profoundly moronic you possibly be?'

"It's what Virya would do."

"And what if I don't win the bid? Wouldn't that be just a bit embarrassing?"

"Then keep bidding until you do."

Rey starts to laugh, then pauses. "How much money did you say the Vorians have again?"

"I didn't say, because nobody really knows. Which usually means they have a lot."

"Right. How could I forget. They funded the Death Star."

Something subtle shifts in Ben's face, a wall going up between them. Rey immediately regrets the small jab. She worries about how easy it is, how quick they are to slip back into their old game of trading wounds. Sorry catches like a stone in her throat. Instead she caves into his suggestion. "Alright. I'll bid. But I'm still nervous."

Ben nods, but his tone is a bit more formal when he replies. "Aside from the bidding itself, just try to minimize your interactions with others. If you get stuck between a rock and a hard place, you'll just have to improvise as best you can."

"Improvise," Rey repeats. "That's our plan. Force. And how am I supposed minimize interactions? She's a socialite."

When Virya had explained to Rey that mingling with other people was pretty much her job, Rey had asked who paid her. Virya had only laughed.

"True," Ben allows, "but she's also in mourning. You can use that as a pretense to shut down anyone who approaches you."

"Oh." Rey says. Then she looks back down at her clothes. Oh.

Realization hits her hard. How had she missed it? The monochrome outfit was an extremely fashionable power-suit, but it was still an outfit of mourning. And the annoying bit of lace Rey had flippantly pushed off her face after Virya had put it there? Not just an inconvenient hair ornament. A veil.

To obscure your face, Virya had said. And maybe that was true. But it was also a symbol of grief.

Rey wants to kick herself. True, the Vorians were devoted to the Sith and had most likely been malicious and cruel. Still, Rey knew what it was like to lose a family. She couldn't imagine going through that, and then having to send someone who didn't even know or care about them to mourn in her place. She inhales a bit too sharply and blinks back sudden emotion at thoughts of her own parents.

She catches Ben watching her with a quiet knowing. They aren't connected by the Force anymore, but he's still been inside her head.

Rey pulls the veil down over her eyes. Maybe she and Virya have something in common after all.

#

"Miss Vorian. Welcome. What a beautiful machine."

Once the belt stops securely on the roof deck, Rey looks up to see a young man in a pressed suit striding toward their ship. He greeted her, but his eyes are honed on the vehicle, a dreamy smile on his face. To Rey's surprise, he reaches out with a white-gloved hand and takes a hold of her pilot's hatch, as if he's planning to swing down into her seat once Rey leaves it.

Rey frowns, pulling the butterfly hinge back toward herself and out of his fingers. "Do I know you?"

Suit blinks in confusion. "Er. Miss?"

Rey realizes then that maybe Virya does know him. Why else would he just walk up and take a hold of the woman's ship like it was nothing? Rey curses inwardly. She's ruined this already, she knew this would never -

"Is there a problem?"

The voice, deep and resonate behind the hollow of a mask, pricks along Rey's spine. She turns, knowing what she will see but still hating the sight. Ben's suit of black armor has been topped by a dark, metal face. He must have slipped the mask on while she was confronting Suit.

Ben's new mask is half visor, heavily tinted to hide the features beneath. A blunt, durasteel grate covers his jaw. While it has no human features or expression, the mask is cruel in its simplicity. Rey fights the sudden urge to wrap both her hands around it and pull it off his head. She wants to see the face underneath, to know that it is still Ben's. She stamps on the irrational reaction. There's no time for that now.

Suit stammers. "Well, Sir… it's a complementary valet?"

Rey almost asks what he's talking about, but thinks the better of it. She schools her expression into that haughty aloofness that Virya wears as a default.

Ben considers, then takes the ignition drive from her and hands it to Suit. "Take it," he says. "But know that after the events of last month, I am now the Head of Security for Miss Vorian and all her belongings. Should anything happen to this ship, you'll be answering to me."

Suit receives the ignition drive with a slight tremor. "Y-yes. Understood, Sir."

Ben turns from the ship and toward the penthouse, looking to Rey to lead the way.

Taking her cue, Rey throws one more warning glance at Suit, who stands rigid as a statue, then turns as neatly as she can manage on her kitten heel and strides toward the penthouse entrance.

"You let him take the ship," Rey hisses once they are out of ear shot. "How could you let him take the ship?"

"He's a valet," Ben replies, voice equally low. "He just parks it for you."

"What? Why do I need someone to park my own ship?"

"It's a rich person thing."

"That makes no sense. If I were rich, I would pay to have random strangers not touch my ship."

There is a fluttery little exhale from behind the mask, a sigh, a laugh, or something in between.

"You'd be amazed by the things they pay for," Ben says. "And by the things they think are for sale."

#

The inside of the penthouse is a work of art, equal parts museum, gallery, and residence. The floors are black marble veined with white. An endless hallway is lined with alcoves that house all sorts of wonders, each with it's own spotlight. Sculptures made of stones that Rey has never heard of, paintings older than some galaxies, interactive digital holograms that weave hypnotically from ceiling to floor, as well as antique pottery, machinery, and tools. In one alcove, Rey sees what looks like a perfectly intact human skeleton.

Thirty feet up, the second floor is an interior balcony, with a look-down view to the entry way and the alcoves below. A number of guests are gathered up there, all beautiful clothes and sparkling jewelry. One of them notices Rey stepping through the entryway and elbows the person next to him. His companion glances down, then does a double take so fast that he nearly sprains his neck. It would've been funny under different circumstances. Clearly, no one had expected Virya to show.

Rey pretends not to notice the low whispers slithering down from the second floor, the feel of more and more eyes landing on her, like desert flies on a fresh carcass. She feels exposed, as if she is another artifact to be scrutinized from above.

"… here after all."

"- not even a full month ago… entire family turned to ash. And the youngest only five."

" - shouldn't be out in public again so soon."

"Just disrespectful to the dead, isn't it?"

Rey's throat constricts as she listens to the hissing vitriol. She is glad now for the veil. It helps to hide her fury and inexplicable shame. She's certain Virya wouldn't have let this get to her and that only makes it worse.

Three servants rush to greet them, dressed in crisp uniforms that aren't precisely military but aren't civilian either. They bow and smile obsequiously, but Rey would bet her light saber that each of them was armed and competent in a fight.

"Miss Vorian," a tall Twi'lek bows deeply. "We didn't know whether to expect you. Master Rosshel will be so pleased to know you were able to join us. And I see you're accompanied by your…" Still hinged at the waist, the servant's eyes drift to cast a significant look toward the heavily armored, masked figure beside her.

"Body guard," Ben finishes.

The Twi'lek bares its teeth. Rey isn't quite convinced it's a smile.

"Ah." The Twi'lek straightens. His two counterparts follow his lead. "Unfortunately, we do have a strict policy on who we can allow through the door. Guests only, I'm afraid. I do apologize for that, Sir. As a body guard, you can understand that this is an absolute necessity for security."

Rey's stomach plunges. Will she have to go in alone?

Ben replies, threat lacing his low tone. "Now that I'm here, I'm sure you can make an exception."

"My deepest apologies. I cannot. This event is strictly closed to all except for the families invited. If I were to allow you through, every guest would demand their own security details as well. We wouldn't be able to keep track of who was who, there would be concealed weapons abound, and before you know it we'd have a real mess on our hands."

The Twi'lek's words are directed at Ben, but his pale yellow eyes slide to Rey's. And although Ben is the one bristling, starting forward to bully the servant as he did the valet, Rey understands that this challenge is meant for her. She must pass it herself if she's to earn her place.

An idea strikes her. A very, very stupid idea. But he'd told her to improvise.

Rey lays a ringed hand on Ben's chest, halting him mid-step. She takes a moment to channel Virya's confidence, squaring her chin, then says cooly, "I don't see the issue here."

"Well, as I said -"

"I heard what you said. But I don't see the issue."

The Twi'lek blinks, glancing to his fellow servants. He inclines his head deferentially. "I apologize, Miss Vorian. I am but a simple servant. I do not quite follow your meaning."

"Then you are indeed simple," Rey replies with Virya's scoff. Ben is staring at her, wondering what the hell she's up to. Rey pointedly ignores him. She's taking this plunge. She slides her fingers slowly over his broad chest, tracing the contour of his armored plate. Then she wraps her fingers around his upper arm. "You said strictly closed except for the families invited, correct?"

"Well… yes."

"Then as I said, there is no issue." Rey runs her touch down Ben's arm, then twines his gloved hand in hers. "We are engaged."

#

Silence blossoms like a giant moonflower. The whispering from the balcony ceases. Rey is tempted to look up at the eyes she can feel boring into her from above, but decides that Virya wouldn't have considered that worth her time.

Don't worry about how you look in their eyes. Think about how they would look in hers.

"I…" the Twi'lek servant wavers, clearly knocked off balance, "I'm ever so sorry. I wasn't aware you were engaged. But you.. I thought you just said you were her body guard?"

"He is," Rey says quickly. "Both my personal body guard and and my fiancé." To emphasize the suggestion of intimacy, Rey puts her free hand on Ben's bicep and angles her body toward his. Ben stands rigid as a rock, not even trying to work with her. "If the last month has taught me anything, it's that you can never be too careful. Why not mix business with pleasure?"

"Well, I…" the Twi'lek is still trying to gather himself. His reaction, in fact the entire room's reaction, is a little more extreme that Rey had expected. She'd been hoping for just enough surprise to convince their way in. Instead she was getting abject shock.

Ben's staring hard at her now. She can feel his eyes boring into her through the tinted visor. She squeezes his arm a little tighter than she needs to, wishing they were connected by the Force so she could slip into his mind. Just go with it!

"So, since we're family," Rey continues. "You may as well show us to the auction now."

Rather than wait for the Twi'lek to find some other reason to refuse, Rey starts down the shallow foyer steps. She heads straight for a spiral stair that seems to lead up to the balcony with the other guests. Only when her hand tugs on Ben's does he belatedly start to follow. He moves like a statue trying to walk. Any more stiffly, and she could have stuffed him in one of the alcoves with a spotlight of his own. The plaque would read something like "Ben Dumbstruck Solo".

"Of - of course, Miss Vorian." To Rey's dismay, the servants start scurrying after her. The Twi'lek has to scuttle in a half-walk, half-jog to take his place in the lead. "Right this way. Could we get you any refreshments? H'orderves? Perhaps something to drink?"

Rey starts to refuse, then remembers that she is supposed to be Virya. She makes an effort to slow her gate and look more relaxed. Ben's hand is like a rock in her grip. "Yes," she replies. "I need champagne. Immediately."

**A/N:** WE MADE IT, FAM


	12. A Trustworthy Arrangement

The news of Virya's engagement is shocking. Apparently, so shocking that even by the time Rey and Ben step onto the balcony, the room still hasn't recovered.

Rey had prepared herself for a barrage of questions and half-sheathed insults. Instead she finds a small crowd, mostly human and impeccably dressed, all gaping at the couple. Rey squares her shoulders and lifts her chin. But most eyes only linger on her for a moment before fixating on Ben.

Rey shoots him a sidelong glance, worried he's been recognized. But the mask keeps his features concealed.

Their Twi'lek escort turns to them. "We've prepared your private box if you would like to proceed there directly. The auction will start in ten minutes."

Rey almost sighs in relief at the idea of a private box. "Yes."

The Twi'lek leads them through the gathering. Several guests make blatant attempts to peer through Ben's tinted visor as he passes. Ben stares each one down until they look away or fall behind.

The servant ushers them into a massive theater, complete with a chandelier, orchestra pit, and stage. Rey recognizes it from history holograms as the kind of venue where people used watch opera and plays. The Twi'lek leads them past the mezzanine seating to a small stairway that's been cordoned off with a gold chain.

Ben gestures for Rey to lead, hand ghosting on the small of her back. His slight touch feels surprisingly warm on her skin as she climbs the first few steps.

"Miss Vorian!"

Rey stops on the fourth step, grimacing. She'd been so close to escaping. Turning, she sees a portly human man walking briskly after them. Rey keeps her face neutral, hoping Virya doesn't know this man.

"I'm glad I caught you," the man pants, approaching the stair. He has a wide mouth and slightly bulging eyes, reminding Rey of an amphibian. As he starts up the first step, Ben immediately steps between them, blocking the path to Rey.

"Sir," the Twi'lek says, "this area is for private box holders only."

From the third step, Ben looms like a silent menace. If Rey hadn't been higher up on the fourth, she'd have needed to lean around him to see.

The portly man retreats, taken aback. "Oh. Yes. Yes, of course," he takes a handkerchief and dabs at his glistening forehead. "Then perhaps if she could come down for a brief moment? I have some information that I think might be of particular value to you."

Rey nearly leaps down the stairs. Information. Information is the sole purpose of this mission. And Rey thought she'd have to spend weeks, _months _even, impersonating Virya Vorian before she learned anything more than frivolous gossip. And now here information was, throwing itself at her feet.

"Miss Vorian," the Twi'lek servant says to her, "we don't have long until the auction starts. I can dispose of this man if you - "

"Leave us," Rey tells the Twi'lek.

The servant frowns. Beneath his act of bowing and scraping, Rey sees intelligence swimming in his pale yellow eyes. She doesn't trust him.

"I'm afraid that's impossible. I must remain here to see that the chain is drawn back. This man may not enter the private boxes."

"He won't." Ben's voice is a low threat. The portly man actually shrinks back. Rey resists the urge to shove Ben aside. He's being so overbearing, it's difficult to get anything done.

"You can wait at the top of the stairs where you can see us," Rey tells the servant. "We'll only be a moment."

The Twi'lek hesitates, searching for a reason to stay. Rey is becoming certain he's more than a simple servant. "It's fine. Go and wait for us at the top." Rey waves her hand, pretending to dismiss him but actually summoning the Force to help her persuasion.

The Force jerks from her fingers and slams into the Twi'lek's mind, not a suggestion but a bludgeoning command. His face goes slack, eyes dulling. Rey startles, her breath catching. The Force had lunged from her like a hound freed from a chain, well beyond her control. If the Twi'lek stood there in a stupor for too long, it was bound to raise questions… Rey watches with worry as the gold chain slides from the servant's listless fingers. Dazedly, he climbs to the top of the stairs and halts on the landing, looking around as if lost. Rey swallows, hoping no one finds him like that. Hoping the Force hasn't done any permanent damage to his mind.

Rey descends the four steps, having to push Ben lightly to the side when he refuses to budge. She pauses in front of the portly man, uncertain how to greet him. As a stranger, foe, or friend?

"Thank you, Miss Vorian." The man smiles and pats his brow with a handkerchief. Rey decides that even if he has met Virya before, he's not familiar enough to be comfortable with her.

"Well?" she prompts. "We don't have much time."

The man's gaze flicks toward Ben. "I'd, uh, hoped we might speak alone?"

Ben steps heavily to the ground floor, his shadow falling over Rey and the newcomer. "Whatever you have to say to her, you'll say it in front of me."

"It's just… well, you see," the man clasps his hands. "I am under a contract of strict confidentiality with the Vorians. And until your union is made official, I'd technically be in breach unless I can speak with Miss Vorian alone."

Ben does not like that. She can _feel_ how much he dislikes it. And judging by the fresh sheen of sweat rippling across the pudgy newcomer's forehead, he feels it too. But neither does the man give in, looking to Rey for help. She glances over her shoulder at the Twi'lek at the top of the stairs. There's no way to know how long they have before he regains his senses. Farther down the hall, people are already starting to drift through the main entrance and into the mezzanine seats. She makes a quick decision.

"I'll handle this," she says to Ben. "Why don't you go wait with the servant?" _And make sure no one finds him like that and starts asking questions. _

Ben looks down at her as if she's slapped him. Even without being able to see his face, she can feel his blatant disbelief. He takes a moment to recover, then says, "No. I'm your body guard. I stay."

"Well as my _partner_," Rey stresses the word, hoping to remind him that they are on an actual mission here and that he's not her real body guard, "I'd appreciate it if you let me handle this. Alone. Sometimes we have to separate to get things done... okay, _honey_?" she adds, feeling the plump man's questioning gaze dart back and forth between them at the suddenly tense exchange.

Ben stares at her another moment, then crosses his arms. "I'm staying right here."

"Right here?" Rey asks.

He nods.

"Great," Rey crisply turns and starts down the hallway, dragging the plump man by the elbow. "You stay. We'll be right back."

For the second time since their arrival, Ben stands rigid and speechless as Rey takes matters into her own hands.

#

They only make it a couple of yards down the hallway. Any farther and they would be within earshot of the mezzanine. Also, Rey suspects that if she were to actually leave Ben's line of sight, he would completely lose it. She can imagine him storming after them, tearing light fixtures out of the walls to hurl in his wake.

"This will have to do," Rey tells the man.

He nods, glancing nervously over his shoulder toward Ben. "Quite, ah, protective of you. Isn't he? I've never known a body guard who took a simple conversation so seriously."

Q_uite stubborn and used to getting his way is more like it, _Rey thinks. Ben will make her pay for this later, she knows.

"I suppose in a fiance, it could be considered… endearing?"

Rey swallows a snort. "What is this about? Quick, before he changes his mind."

The man straightens and clears his throat. "Yes. Right. Please allow me to formally introduce myself."

Rey almost breaks into a grin. He is a stranger then. Thank the Force.

"My name is Bindu. I was a business partner of your father's, Force be with him. I was so sorry to hear of his demise last month. Doran Vorian was a great man. A visionary, like his father before him. And the rest of your family of course, so tragic."

Bindu pauses for a response. Rey keeps her face neutral, as Virya had always done whenever someone mentioned her family. Bindu realizes he isn't getting a reaction and clears his throat awkwardly.

"Well, now that you are the sole Vorian, I think you might be interested in assuming your father's end of our arrangement. I wouldn't even renegotiate my rate, although with the deaths of your mother and the other heirs, you're arguably more wealthy than even he was, eh?" Bindu smiles and leans in conspiratorially, as if this is some sort of consolation. She half expects him to wink.

Rey bristles at the mention of Virya's inheritance in the same breath as her entire family's death. If she were Rey Skywalker, she'd tell this man exactly what she thought of him and leave without another word. But she isn't Rey right now. She's Virya Vorian. And while the disgust must flash briefly across her face, Bindu doesn't seem to notice or think he's out of line. Is it just to be expected in Virya's world, where money and ambition reign supreme?

"What kind of business?" Rey asks, a bit more sharply than intended.

"Information. Specifically, the sale of information I have regarding certain activities in the X-16 solar system. The kind that would be of great interest to any of the families in the Inner Circle, and a meaningful advantage to have in your back pocket."

Rey frowns. "Activities like what? And why work with Vorian, I mean, my father instead of one of the other families?"

"Knowledge is power, Miss Vorian. Your father had the wisdom to value it as such and pay the appropriate price. If you're interested in assuming his end of the deal, I'd send you a binding contract and grant you exclusive access to what I know. Otherwise, I'm afraid I cannot divulge any specifics."

Rey hesitates. If she could, she'd stuff all the money she had into his waiting hand. But, unlike Virya, all the money she had wouldn't be close to enough. Inside her purse, there is only a folding vibroblade and a one-way comm device in case this mission goes south.

"You expect payment before proving your information is valuable? Why would I agree to such a blind arrangement?"

"Because you can afford to pay my price. But you can't afford not to. Not if you want to stay alive in the Inner Circle."

"And what is your price? Can you share that at least?"

Bindu names a sum that briefly wipes Rey's mind blank with shock. Either he is telling the truth about having invaluable information, or he's much bolder than Rey had initially given him credit.

Down the hall, Ben is watching them like a ticking bomb, mistrust chipping away at the pride that has kept him rooted to the spot so far. From the corner of her eye, Rey thinks she sees the Twi'lek stirring at the top of the stairs. Her time is running out.

"Perhaps you haven't noticed, Bindu, but I am not my father. Regardless of whatever arrangement you made with him, you've done nothing to prove your information is legitimate or that you are a trustworthy partner."

"Your father believed me trustworthy. You don't trust his judgment?"

"You're right. My father did believe you trustworthy. And look where he is now."

Bindu's eyes widen. Rey presses her point while he's on the back foot.

"You said I need your information to stay alive in the Inner Circle. But whatever you have to offer clearly wasn't enough to protect my father's life. I'll need time to consider this."

Bindu sputters in surprise. "M-Miss Vorian… I can assure you —"

"I'm sure you can understand," Rey cuts him off, "why I'm being more cautious than he was about who I trust."

From the top of the stairs, the Twi'lek servant is turning to watch them. Rey can feel his mind in the Force, surfacing like a diver from the depths. She can't let this drag out any further.

"I'll think about it," Rey says, turning to the steps. "You're attending the Frost Ball, correct?"

"I… yes, of course."

"I'll have an answer for you then. In the meantime, find a way to prove your information is legitimate. Or if you decide you can share something here and now, that would certainly help me decide. You know where to find me."

Rey is already walking away, a strategy she learned selling junk on Jakku. Dig your heels in to a fight and the other side would do the same. Start walking, and they usually called after you with a sudden change of heart.

Bindu's voice does call after her, but it is not with the words she'd hoped for. "I approached you first out of respect for your father. But know that any of Vorian's rivals would be more than happy to take your place. Just keep that mind as you consider my offer."

"I'll see you at the Frost Ball, Bindu," Rey calls over her shoulder without looking back. Internally, she curses the man's resolve. She'd hoped he would have been a bit more of a pushover. She should've known better considering the types of people he worked with.

#

When she reaches Ben, he is seething. She half expects him to snap under his barely contained tension.

"There," she says. "All done."

When he replies, his voice low and dangerous. "What the _hell_ was that?"

Rey pauses to choose her words. The Twi'lek can probably hear them, though Ben has no way to know that without a connection to the Force. As much as she'd love to have it out with him, she has to do so in a way that won't get them exposed.

"That was me doing my job. Do you have a problem with that?"

"I have a problem," he growls, "when you won't let me do mine. I am your body guard. I'm responsible for your safety. I can't protect you from potential threats when you insist on dragging them into private corners and leaving me behind."

"Oh please," Rey slips out of Virya's accent for a moment before she catches herself. A retort slips across her mind, burning like acid, _You're complaining about _me_ leaving _you_ behind? That's rich, Ben Solo._ Instead she says, "That man wasn't any threat I couldn't handle."

"That's my decision. Not yours. Or must I remind you, Virya, that you cannot defend yourself. You don't have any fighting experience, you aren't trained in any sort of weaponry, and everyone here knows that you are in a particularly vulnerable state after last month. So in order to do my job, I need you to stay close to me. At all times."

_Yes thank you, _Rey nearly snaps, _I am very fucking aware of the limitations of this cover you constructed for me. I know I can't get into a fight without revealing myself as a fraud._

"I understand you're worried," she says instead, voice straining. "But you also make _my_ job impossible when you keep lunging at everything with a pulse. I need space sometimes to do the work I need to do. Otherwise this whole thing is just a waste of our time." She gives him a meaningful look.

Ben stares silently down at her from behind his mask. Either he cannot find the words to express himself, or he thinks the silent treatment is a legitimate form of punishment.

'_Ladies and Gentlemen_,_' _a deep voice resonates throughout the theater, interrupting their heated conversation. _'The auction will be starting in just a few moments. At this time we ask everyone to make their way to their seats. Again, the auction will be starting in a few moments. Thank you.' _

Rey forces a stiff smile and extends her hand, hoping they make a convincing couple that's just recovered from a lover's tiff. "Shall we?"

For a moment, Ben does nothing. Then, grudgingly, he reaches out and places his open palm beneath hers. They take the stairs together, Ben drawing the gold chain closed behind them. At the top, they meet the suspicious gaze of the Twi'lek servant. Rey curses under her breath. After how hard the Force hit him, she'd expected him to be out of it for a solid half hour. She'd been right about his intelligence — it was always easier for a sharp mind to resist and recover from Force persuasion.

"Thank you for waiting," Rey says. "You were showing us to our box?"

The servant inclines his head. Perhaps Rey is imagining it, but she thinks some of his obsequiousness has faded. "Of course," he says, tone a bit clipped. "Right this way."

* * *

_{A/N}_

_Rey: Ok, HONEY? _

_Ben: *INTERNALLY SCREAMING*_

_^I've been thinking (after a really sweet comment from a regular reader) that once I (finally) finish this, I might try to include some bonus uploads of certain past chapters / moments written from Ben's POV. __And I think this chap would def be on that list._


	13. Starting Bid

The Twi'lek leads them down a hall lined with private boxes.

When they reach the one closest to the stage, he draws aside a heavy velvet curtain and ushers them onto a private terrace. Rey's heels sink into a carpet so thick, it's almost like stepping into sand. An elegant sofa is framed by marble side tables, small bifocals arranged next to a gold call button. The balcony sits level with the chandelier, which is rotates slowly and sprays shards of soft light all around.

"Your champagne will be brought up presently," the Twi'lek says. "Is there anything else I can bring you at the moment?"

"No," Ben answers. The terseness in his tone makes the underlying meaning clear:_ Get out._

"Very good. If you change your mind, just ring the call button and one of us will attend you." With that, the Twi'lek draws the curtain closed behind him and leaves.

Rey stares at the closed curtain for a long moment. _It worked,_ she thinks in disbelief. _It actually _worked_._ She teeters toward the chandelier and leans heavily against the banister, a great weight sliding from her shoulders. She stares into the floating crystal and glass, which washes her in specks of diamond light.

Below, the mezzanine is filling with the buzz of a dozen conversations as guests trickle in. A few glance up toward the Vorian box, but they are too far below to hear any specifics. The other boxes are near enough to possibly eavesdrop, but for now they are empty. Ben and Rey are alone.

Rey turns from the chandelier. On the other side of the balcony, Ben stands motionless, watching her.

She crosses her arms and arches an eyebrow to ask, _Well? How did I do?_

Ben just stares at her. She waits an awkward moment. She'd expected at least a nod of approval. He's giving her nothing.

"What, really?" Rey pushes off the balcony to stand up straight. "I thought that went well. I got us past that front door hiccup. And I've already set an appointment with an informant at the ball. It could have been so much worse." She pauses. "Know what I think? I think you're just upset you didn't come up with any of it."

Ben gives a slight, almost weary shake of his head.

Rey starts across the balcony, gloating more than a little. "It's okay. You can admit it. They wouldn't have even let you in here without me." She searches for his features beneath the visor, but all she sees is Virya's reflection. Again, she feels the sudden urge to wrench the mask off. She wants to see his face.

Ben seizes her elbows, halting her. Rey teeters in surprise on her kitten heels and Ben steadies her unconsciously.

"What are you -"

Ben's finger lands butterfly soft on her lips. His gentleness alone surprises her into silence.

"Let's not talk about this here," he says. And his voice _is_ different when he's speaking only to her. More Ben and less Kylo. She likes to hear it, likes that he has reserved it for only her. She is about to point out that no one can hear them in the gathering crowd, when Ben leans in close to whisper, "These private boxes are likely bugged."

Rey goes rigid, all smugness vanishing. The weight lands solidly back down on her shoulders. Bugged. Of course they would be. She should've thought of that herself, but she'd been too busy patting herself on the back. Bugged boxes meant Rey won't be able to break character all night, not even when she and Ben were alone.

The curtain flies back, throwing harsh light in from the hall. Rey jerks back from clumsily from Ben in a distinctly un-Virya way. But the intruder is not the sharp-eyed Twi'lek servant or an armed squadron. It is a plump, older woman with a tray of champagne. When she sees Rey and Ben startling apart, her eyes twinkle knowingly.

"Oh, don't pull back on my account," the woman titters. "I've got lips sealed tighter than an o-ring on a rocket booster. And I've never been a stickler for propriety. An engaged couple ought to act engaged, if you ask me. So go on, back into your shadowy love corner. It's very romantic up here after all and it shouldn't go to waste."

Heat flares across Rey's cheeks and the tips of her ears. She accepts a flute, murmuring thanks and trying to remember the way Virya held her champagne.

The woman sets up an ice bucket and places a bottle inside, fresh vapor wisping out of its slender neck.

"I'll just leave this here. Now there's no need for any more interruptions." The older woman turns and winks conspiratorially at them before she closes the curtain.

Rey hears Ben wheeze faintly behind his mask and risks a sidelong glance at him. He looks slowly from the closed curtain down to Rey. _This is all your fault_, his pointed silence says.

Rey clear her throat, raising the champagne to her lips. "Like I said. Could have gone a lot worse." She takes a small sip. Sweetness bursts along her tongue, making Rey falter and blink at the sensation.

Ben notices her sudden stillness and goes tense. "What is it?" he asks. "What's wrong?"

Rey looks up at him, a little wide-eyed. But she can't exactly tell him it's the first time she's ever had champagne. Or that it tastes like bottled starlight. Not with the threat of a wire tap in the background. "This champagne," Rey says carefully. "It's very good."

Ben waits, clearly expecting some kind of follow-up such as "_but I can't feel my hands anymore_" or "_it's making my vision fade_".

"I've… never had champagne before," Rey says softly, "nothing that's this good."

Ben stares at her a moment, then relaxes, seeming to understand her. He starts to reply but just then the lights dim, as does the chatter of the crowd below. Rey and Ben turn to see a tall, human man in a navy suit taking the stage.

Ben's slight relaxation disappears, darkness tainting his tone. "Rosshel."

**#**

Rey sits beside Ben on the small sofa. Together, they watch Rosshel make his way to the podium. Rosshel smiles at his audience. He looks surprisingly… normal. Rey had expected a man visibly warped by the dark side, like Snoke and Palpatine. But the middle-aged man below is almost handsome, in a fatherly kind of way — square-jawed and warm eyed with a thick head of salt and pepper hair. As he adjusts a small mic pined to his navy suit lapel, Rey finds no signs of disdain or harshness in his expression. He looks at the gathering as if he is greeting a group of close friends.

"Well, thank you all for coming," Rosshel says, his voice as warm and strong as his smile. "My sincere apologies that we had to move this event at the last minute due to extenuating circumstances. I know you are all terribly busy. It means a great deal that you still found a way to be here tonight. So please, lets start with a round of applause for you, our guests, who made this evening possible."

Rosshel claps his hands together and the crowd follows his lead. Rey catches herself moving to applaud too, when she remembers no one can see her up in the box. There isn't any reason for her to join in. Still, Rosshel's natural charisma had nearly lured her into doing it anyway. She leans over to whisper in Ben's ear. "Maybe he really did have a good reason for moving the date? He seems sincere enough."

"He always does."

Rey glances up at Ben, then sits back on her side of the sofa as the applause dies down.

"I've taken a peek behind the curtain here and let me tell you, you're in for a spectacular night. I made a few contributions from my personal collection but I was so impressed at what the rest of you have brought to the table. It's a privilege to do this sort of thing with like-minded people, those who have a real appreciation for the rare and the beautiful. Truly, thank you all for making this evening what it is."

Another round of light applause, this time unsolicited.

"As a reminder, we go by highest bid here. Whoever hits the highest price wins whatever is being sold. As Auction Master, I hold final authority over all of the proceedings, but I'm going to leave most of the work to Dawson here, who'll be your auctioneer. So please sit back, enjoy the free drinks, and don't forget to have fun!"

Rosshel switches off his mic and steps down from the stage, trading places with a willowy man who takes the auctioneer's podium.

"Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen," the auctioneer says. "For our first item, we have a rare artifact from the isle of Mandune." At the auctioneer's cue, a gap opens opens in the center of the stage floor. A rotating platform rises up through it, showcasing a small statue that's made entirely of rare gems and bright metal.

Rey gives it a cursory evaluation. It's shiny to be sure, but ultimately useless. A petrified rock would be of greater utility. If Rey had hauled in such a frivolous item to the auction tents in Jakku, she'd have been laughed out. She shakes her head and takes another sip of champagne.

"As you can see," the auctioneer gestures appreciatively, "the crude craftsmanship indicates that this relic was carved by hand, without the aid of automation or machinery. It likely dates back to the triple-digit annums. A true historical relic. Shall we start the bidding at five million?"

Rey chokes on champagne, bubbles burning in her nose. Before she can ask if the auctioneer is insane, a bright, digital 20 flashes above one of the seats in the mezzanine.

"Very good, five is bid. Ten. Fifteen is bid. Twenty-five. Thirty-two…"

Rey isn't sure if it's the champagne taking effect, but she feels lightheaded. The holographic numbers flicker, climbing higher and higher as she gapes.

"Are you alright, _Virya_?" Ben asks, putting a pointed emphasis on the name.

Rey snaps her mouth closed, remembering herself. The sums are shocking to her. With the first bid alone, the Rey would have never needed to scavenge again. She could have bought and sold everyone she'd ever haggled with. She could have fixed up a ship and gotten off Jakku to look for her family… but Virya Vorian wouldn't bat an eye at entire livelihoods being tossed like pennies.

Rey composes herself and takes another sip of champagne. As she'd suspected, this auction will be nothing like Jakku.

**#**

A half-hour into the auction, Ben leans down to whisper into Rey's ear. His voice so low that even an advanced wire tap would struggle to pick up the words over the auctioneer's incessant stream. "When are you going to bid on something?"

Rey tilts her head back, and he leans down to let her whisper into his. "I'm not."

Ben pulls away to look at her. She knows that beneath the tinted visor, he is glaring. She glares defiantly back. She mouths silently back at him, _This is insane._

He leans back down to whisper again, and this time she both feels and hears the heat in his tone. "I thought we agreed."

Rey pulls back and looks at him, then points with her eyes down into her lap, where she rubs her thumb along her fingertips in the universal sign for 'expensive'. She deepens her scowl. _Too much. _

In the last thirty minutes, Rey has witnessed one room spend the equivalent of a small city's economy on just a handful of items. While she has managed to keep her outward composure, inside she is staggering. There is no way she could ever spend that much money, let alone someone _else's _money.

Ben leans in again but Rey stays upright rather than offering him her ear. He isn't changing her mind on this.

Ben waits for a beat, then wraps his arm around her, towing her across the sofa. Rey suppresses a yelp, champagne nearly spilling. Ben holds her firmly to him, the durasteel grate of his jaw-plate touching her ear. Rey feels the whisper of his breath and, in her chest, a little twist of her heart. "Just pick something. Anything. Otherwise, you're going to raise inconvenient questions. People will be wondering why you didn't-"

The curtain flies back. Harsh light falls across them as someone enters their box.

"We're busy," Ben snaps, twisting around. Then he tenses, grip tightening on Rey's waist.

Rey has to tilt her head back to see who has interrupted them, expecting another servant with a refill or refreshments.

Instead, Rosshel himself is standing in the doorframe, a crooked smile in the corner of his mouth.

"Pardon the intrusion," he says, casual as if he were walking in on afternoon tea. "I need to speak with Virya."


	14. Lion's Den

Rosshel steps onto the private terrace as confidently as if he owns the place. Which, Rey reminds herself, he does.

Instinct urges Rey to stand but Ben's grip stays firm around her waist, grounding her to him. She stills. If Ben wants to keep her this close, he must think they are in trouble.

Rosshel seems unbothered by their intimate position. He spots the ice bucket and plucks the bottle as well as the flute that was meant for Ben. He pours himself a drink, then strolls over to refill Rey's glass.

As he sits beside her, his knee brushes against Rey's. She catches a whiff of cologne, masculine and expensive. He doesn't even seem to notice Ben's arm wrapped tight around Rey's waist or the tight fit of a sofa only designed for two. Instead, Rosshel gently clinks his drink against Rey's. "Cheers," he sips. "To your being here. I wasn't expecting you after last month's devastating news. Such a terrible accident. I'm so sorry for your loss."

Rey says nothing, not knowing how to respond. From Rosshel's familiar tone and relaxed demeanor, it's clear he knows Virya well enough. Every word she speaks to him holds the potential of giving them away.

"If that damned pilot hadn't also been killed, I'd have offered to see to his punishment personally for you. Such criminal negligence… it's almost as bad a deliberate murder."

It might be her imagination, but Rey thinks she sees something sharpen in Rosshel's gaze when he says that word. Murder. Gray eyes watch her carefully. Rey prays that he cannot hear the pounding of her pulse or feel the heat rolling off her skin. Again, she sends a silent thanks to Virya for the veil. But will it and the makeup be enough? Is Rosshel staring because he's recognized her as an impostor? Or is he simply waiting to see how Virya will react to the suggestion that her family's death wasn't an accident? If Rey _had _been Virya, if the Vorians _had _been her true family, she might have flinched. As it is, she is still so shocked at being confronted by the head of an Inner Circle family that her expression remains blank.

"Thank you," she manages finally, voice scraping. "I appreciate your condolences."

Rosshel watches her for another beat, then places a reassuring hand on her knee. "No. Thank _you _for being here during a time of such immense personal grief. You've grown into a very strong and beautiful woman, Virya." His grip, Rey thinks, is just a little too tight for comfort.

Ben clears his throat, the sound amplified by his mask.

Rosshel smiles faintly, but gives no other sign that he heard the noise. In fact, he hasn't shown Ben a single sign of acknowledgement since his entrance. Now Rosshel sits back into the sofa, releasing his hold on her, and raises an amused brow. The implication is clear, like an inside joke: Rosshel and Virya, both members of the Inner Circle, are having a private conversation. As far as he's concerned, the outsider in black armor may as well not be there at all.

"I admit, as surprised as I was to hear of your arrival, I was even more surprised to learn that you were accompanied by a fiancé. Very unusual of you. In fact, it was almost too difficult for me to believe."

Rey bites her tongue, trying to think of a response.

"You look uncomfortable," Rosshel comments. "Is something making you nervous?"

"No," Rey says sharply. "I'm fine." A bead of sweat glides down the nape of her neck. She tries to swallow her nerves but composure is impossible while she's trapped in Rosshel's gray stare, cool and sharp as a waiting knife. He smiles, and she sees the knowing in his eyes. It makes her feel sick.

"Come now, enough lies."

"I… I don't know what you-"

Rosshel leans in, voice lowering dangerously. "You did well to make it this far, I'll give you that. You even managed to fool the other guests. But you do not fool me, and especially not in my own house. So it ends here and now. It's time you dropped this act."

#

Rosshel's words tear through Rey like a cannon. She feels stupid, so _stupid_ for thinking she could get away with this. For sitting here like an idiot while Rosshel toyed with her. There are probably a dozen armed guards just beyond the curtain, waiting on a word to round her and Ben up. The Force jolts like lightening inside her, ready to strike.

"Your face alone gives it all away," Rosshel continues. "This engagement of yours is a lie."

Rey stares at Rosshel, her body and mind gone numb. "My… engagement?"

"It was a clever idea, albeit a bit poorly acted. A perfect excuse to keep a personal body guard on you at all times. I suppose I don't blame you after everything that's happened."

Relief washes over Rey, hollowing her out. She feels the line of Ben's body slacken along her side. She realizes that Rosshel is looking to her for a response, and uses her drink as an excuse to buy time. How would Virya react, she wonders, tipping the flute back and pretending to sip. Would she dare to contradict Rosshel? Or would she demure and play the obedient, pretty face?

"The guests were one thing. But none of the Inner Circle families would ever believe that you'd enter into an engagement with anyone below your station. Especially after you've spent so long saving yourself for Kylo Ren."

Rey chokes on champagne. Bubbles rake her lungs as she coughs into her hand, eyes watering. _Especially after what? _Thankfully, the drink clogging her throat keeps her from voicing the words aloud.

"You've had your heart set on him for years now, no? And your father went to so much effort to arrange that engagement for you…"

Rey gapes at Rosshel. In her mind, a dozen little memories click together. Virya deferring to Ben and calling him 'my Lord'. Virya declaring she would do anything, if only Ben would ask it of her. Virya sending Ben those meaningful looks that would stir the heart of any sane man. Rey's grip tightens on her flute. She is suddenly keenly aware of the hand wrapped around her waist and how much she'd like to pry it off. She opens her mouth to respond, but finds she cannot dredge up a single sound.

"That's a dead arrangement," Ben says. "Made between Doran Vorian and Snoke, both of whom are now deceased. As is Kylo Ren himself."

"_Presumed _deceased," Rosshel corrects, his eyes still on Rey. "As Virya herself reminded me last month, the drones never found Ren's corpse. Or don't you remember, Virya, how you looked down your nose at the rest of us during that meeting? How you called us weak of faith for believing Kylo Ren was gone for good?"

"If Kylo Ren were alive," Ben counters, "he'd have returned by now to claim his empire. He is deceased or so weakened that he may as well be. Either way, the Supreme Leader is dead."

"Long live the Supreme Leader," Rosshel says, without missing a beat. He is still smiling at Rey, as if she were a pet he was particularly fond of. It makes her uncomfortable. She has the distinct feeling of stepping into a snare that's about to be yanked.

"You can debate as much as you want," Ben says. "Like it or not, we _are_ engaged. Her reasons for choosing me are none of your concern."

Rey nearly turns to stare at Ben, surprised by the possessive tone. Not an hour ago, he'd been dumbstruck and then annoyed by her announcing an engagement. Now he was throwing it in Rosshel's face?

"Of course," Rosshel concedes, as if Ben hadn't said anything at all. "I hadn't expected you to wait around forever for a fallen man. Devotion or no, you have too much sense for that. And in fact, that was precisely what I told your father two months ago. I assume he never shared our conversation with you? No, I can see from your face that he didn't. I suppose I'm not surprised. Doran, Force be with him, was rather domineering. He probably thought there was no need."

Rosshel runs a hand through his iron-shot hair and sighs. "Well, I suppose it's better you hear it from me rather than anyone else. You see, Virya, before your father's death, the two of us reached an agreement regarding the future of our families. Doran agreed that if Kylo Ren hadn't returned after three months, your engagement to him would be broken in favor of someone more… suitable."

"Suitable?" Rey echoes. The phantom of an implication flits across her mind. But he couldn't possibly mean…

"Are you getting to the point?" Ben growls. "Or do you enjoy the melodrama?"

Rosshel gives a self-effacing smile, as if acknowledging the awkwardness of it all. "Well, someone more suitable such as… me."

Rey's mouth falls open. She feels a faint spasm of Ben's fingers on her waist, as if he is fighting the urge to yank Rey away from the other man.

Rosshel's smile is kind, but there is a new sternness in his voice. "So you see, Virya, this amusing little ruse between you and your body guard cannot continue. You and I are already engaged."


	15. Technicality

"I see I've shocked you," Rosshel says. "That's completely understandable. I'm sorry you had to find out this way. Doran ought to have found the time to tell you himself."

Rey is speechless. Thankfully, that seems to be precisely the reaction Rosshel had been expecting.

"Consider it," he says gently. "It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Rosshel Inc. is the leading producer of military tech and fleets. And the Vorians are one of the wealthiest families in the known universe. Combine my technological capabilities with your financial resources, and we'd create an alliance none could challenge. And this very moment, the _exact _moment when the Tannias, the Lannlas, and the Drakuns are plotting ways to take us down? The Vorians have a daughter of marrying age. And I happen to become a widower. It was meant to be, Virya."

"A widower?" Ben interrupts sharply. "What happened to Talia?"

A flash of annoyance disturbs Rosshel's gentle expression. It is only as passing ripple, but Rey catches it. "She passed a few weeks ago. Force be with her."

"From what?"

"Wait," Rey interrupts. "I thought you reached this agreement with my father months before his death. But your wife only passed a few weeks ago?"

Rosshel smiles wryly. "She'd been unwell for some time. A chronic illness."

A chill strings down Rey's spine. Rosshel does not seem like a man in grief. He is a liar, she thinks. The kind capable of telling even the boldest lie without any fear of being called out. All that charm and confidence stems from the knowledge that he is completely untouchable.

"Do you have any proof?" Rey asks, suddenly emboldened.

"Of what?"

"The arrangement with my father. What proof is there aside from your word?"

Rosshel gives Rey a meaningful look. "Come now, Virya. I've known you since you were a child. Are you really going to twist my arm for proof?"

"If she doesn't, I will," Ben growls. "And if it turns out you're lying, I'll do more than twist."

Rosshel leans forward to look directly at Ben for the first time, as if he's only just noticed him. "Sorry. What did you say your name was again?"

"I didn't."

They hold each other's stares like two predators squaring off to tear each other's throats. In this moment, Rey thinks, it might be a good thing that Ben has been cut off from the Force. Otherwise, she'd doubtless be feeling it gathering in the room and slithering into a coil around Rosshel's neck.

"Well, Mr. No Name," Rosshel finally breaks the silence, "I'm having a private conversation with my betrothed. Perhaps you could wander off and find something to occupy yourself for a few moments? I could loan you some pocket money for more appropriate attire. Something more suitable for a refined gathering such as this and less to bravado and empty threats."

Ben seems to be thinking about lunging across Rey to show Rosshel just how not-empty his threats really are.

_Don't let him bait you,_ Rey thinks, wishing their bond were still intact. _That's exactly what he wants. _

"You don't need to know my name," Ben finally replies. "I am the one she chose, of her own _free will._ Her choice takes precedent over a dead father's wishes."

And even despite the tension of this moment, their cover teetering on getting through this interaction with Rosshel, part of Rey wonders which _her_ is he talking about. Whose choice is he so furious to defend?

Rosshel reaches into the inner pocket of his suit and produces a datapad. "Not merely a dead father's wishes. A signed contract. Take a look if you'd like. Doran had his own team write it."

Ben snatches the tablet. Rey turns to read along with him, keeping a careful eye on Rosshel.

The older man leans back into the sofa, sipping his champagne and exuding confidence. "Read it as many times as you want. You'll see Doran Vorian agrees that his eldest daughter will enter into an immediate familial union with the head of the Rosshel family, which is me."

"An immediate familial union," Rey repeats. The phrase catches and turns in her mind.

"Just so."

"But… that doesn't explicitly mean marriage."

Rosshel blinks as if slapped. "What?"

"The exact phrasing is, 'an immediate familial union'," Rey points to the line in the text. "Not marriage. That could be anything, right? Brother and sister, father and daughter, even uncle and niece."

Ben stares at the text beneath Rey's finger. Then, from under the grate of his mask, she sees a small smile. She has found a loophole. And Ben is proud of her.

"Give me that," Rosshel snatches the tablet out of Ben's hands. "It says here, 'The eldest Vorian daughter shall enter into a …'" He trails, a faint frown creeping into his brow. Rey thinks it might be the first genuine expression she's seen.

Without lifting his eyes from the datapad, Rosshel jams his finger on the call button built into the side table.

"Servants Quarters," a crisp, female voice answers. "What can we do for -"

"Get me a legal droid in the Vorian Box_._"

"M-Master Rosshel. Of course, Sir. Right away, Sir."

"And a real drink."

"Yes. Anything else, Master Rosshel?"

"Do it now_._" Rosshel disconnects. When he glances up at Rey and Ben, his eyes are darker than a winter storm. "Let's see what Legal has to say about this. In the meantime," he gestures at the the stage below, where the bidding is still underway. "Let me know if you see anything you want, Virya. Unlike some, who can only resort to brutish violence, I can afford to buy you anything you'd like."

#

"The language is imprecise. We cannot _technically_ interpret this as Vorian giving Rosshel his daughter's hand in marriage."

Fifteen minutes later, Rey sits between a stewing Rosshel and an icy Ben Solo. If the droid had been able to detect the more nuanced indicators of human mood, it probably would have backed up by several yards and started choosing its words more carefully.

"Then what _can _we interpret it as?" Rosshel snaps. "It's a binding contract. I must get something out of it."

"Yes. The rights of a familial union," The bot affirms. "And my databases indicate that all of Virya Vorian's family members are deceased as of last month. Meaning Master Rosshel is now effectively Miss Vorian's only family."

"Yes, we got that part. But what _kind _of family."

"Immediate. A legal guardian might be the best proxy."

"Legal guardian," Rey echoes. "As in a parent?"

"Something like that. Or a much older brother."

"And the assets?" Rosshel asks. "As her guardian do I get ownership over her assets?"

"Well," The robot scrolls through a few lines of text. "If she were a minor, you would have spending discretion over her inheritance. However, Miss Vorian is a legal adult. While her fortune technically sits under the Rosshel umbrella, it exists as an independent capital pool. It cannot be spent by anyone, including Mr. Rosshel, without formal, written consent from Virya herself."

Rosshel inhales deeply, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Back to the subject of marriage," the bot continues, "While Rosshel does not have the right to _take _Virya's hand in marriage, he does have the right to give it away."

The three humans stare at the droid. It gazes back at them blankly. "Should I repeat myself?"

"Please," Rey says hoarsely.

The droid repeats itself.

"So…" Rosshel gives a frustrated, half-laugh. "Let me get this straight. I own the rights to give away her hand in marriage, but not to take it myself?"

"Correct. Just as her father would have the right, if he were still alive. Or an older brother."

Rosshel stares at the droid. Then shakes his head and takes a sip of his new drink. "Doran Vorian, you son of a bitch. I'd murder you if you weren't already dead."

All in all, he's taking it better than Rey, who is still struggling to believe it. Doran Vorian had designed the contract as a practical joke, a spiteful dig at an old rival. Like sliding a beautifully wrapped present across the table, only to have it revealed as an empty box. Or throwing a steak to a canine, only to have it be made of styrofoam. Except in this case the styrofoam steak was his own daughter. What kind of people _were _these?

"Very well," Rosshel says. "If I can't absorb your house, I'll make money off you in some other way."

Rey turns, feeling Rosshel's eyes sweep over her with clinical appraisal. She knows that look. She'd seen it a dozen times on Jakku. It was the look a cattle merchant had the day before market, eyeing up freshly fattened livestock. When Rosshel's gaze finds her chest, he pauses. She thinks she sees the older man frown slightly. Rey fights the urge to slap him.

"How would you feel about going up for auction, Virya?"

Rey isn't surprised by the question.

But Ben is. "What?" he asks, a deceptively simple reaction.

Rosshel shrugs. "You heard the droid. I own the rights to her hand. It's my property, given freely by her father. I don't see any reason why I shouldn't offer it up to the highest bidder. Since I can't have it myself. Unless Virya decides to change her mind about choosing me over a nameless brute?"

Before Rey can answer, Ben snaps. Moving faster than she can see, he hauls Rosshel to his feet by his silk lapels.

"Try it," he menaces. "Try it and I'll rip your vile -"

"Careful, No Name," Rosshel covers Ben's hands with his own. "Don't forget yourself. You're in my house. Harm me, I'll have you cut down where you stand. And don't think I won't. I served under Lord Snoke for years. You would shiver to even imagine the things that I have done to men a thousand times more important than you."

Ben laughs at that. He actually laughs. It is a cold, cruel sound that makes Rey's heart seize.

Rosshel is stunned. "Are… are you laughing at me, you lunatic?" He shoves out of Ben's grip. "You're even more imbecilic than I thought. Don't you get it? You have no authority here. You're _powerless_."

"Well technically," the droid interrupts, still oblivious to dynamic unfolding before it. "As her chosen fiancé, this man does have some rights."

The three humans stare again at the droid.

This time, it is Rosshel's hands that turn into fists. "Such as?" he grits out.

"Such as the right to challenge whoever tries to claim Miss Vorian's hand. If her fiance of choice can defeat a new suitor in either a financial bid or in physical combat, he retains her status as her fiance of choice."

"Oh for the love of - " Rosshel looks like he might shove the droid over the ledge. He is losing his composure. And that tells Rey that they need to get out of here. Fast.

"Alright," she interjects. "I think we all agree that this is getting out of control. Lets just take a moment and -"

"Fine," Rosshel interjects. "Just two conditions need to be met for me to sell her off, right? First, I accept the offered bid. Second, this… troglodyte fails to defeat the new suitor?"

"Yes," the droid affirms. "That would be sufficient."

"So I'll put her up for auction, and highest bidder gets to kill this man?" Rosshel wheels, glaring straight at Ben and not regarding the droid.

"Well, _kill_ is a bit extreme of a-"

"Works for me," Rosshel says. "Bidding starts in an hour. Once he's dead, they can pay me and do whatever they want with her. Does that work for all parties involved?"

"No," Rey snaps.

"Yes," the bot replies simultaneously. It looks to Rey with some confusion, belatedly processing her objection. "That _is _how it's outlined in your father's contract."

"I don't give a damn," Rey snaps. "That's not -"

"And if I defeat the highest bidder?" Ben asks.

"Then it goes to the next bidder," Rosshel says. "And the one after that, and the one after that, however many it takes to beat you down into your place."

"And if I defeat them all?"

Rosshel just laughs. "You arrogant son of a bitch."

Ben looks to the legal bot.

"You would remain her fiancé until such time that a suitor defeats you, or your marriage becomes legally sanctified."

Satisfied, Ben turns to look at Rey.

"No." She glares, willing him to listen for once in his life. "Do not-"

"Fine," Ben says. "I accept."


	16. Champion

"I hope you have a plan." Rey leans with her arms crossed against the door of Rosshel's private dressing room, watching as Ben scours the room for anything he might use in a fight. So far he's come up short.

"I do."

"And I hope it's more than '_beat everyone senseless until they beg my big strong muscles for mercy_.'"

Ben hesitates, suddenly finding the contents of a makeup drawer highly interesting.

"Seriously? That's your plan? By the Force, B-!" Rey bites down hard, swallowing the pieces of his name back down. Even in the privacy of Rosshel's personal dressing room, she doesn't dare say it aloud. "What are you _thinking_?"

Ben starts discarding his heavier armor, making a pile of it in the opposite corner, as far from Rey's fuming as possible.

"I can't believe you're going through with this. You realize this is - " the hem of Ben's shirt rides up as he pulls off his chest plate. Rey's voice catches briefly. Annoyingly. She clears her throat. "Insane."

Ben doesn't respond. Instead he goes about unclasping his ray-deflecting vest and thigh plates. The armor would have saved his life in a shoot out, but in hand-to-hand it will only slow him down.

After four vehement attempts to get through to him, Rey realizes he isn't listening. He's happy to let her go on protesting, as if she were humming a song stuck in her head.

She taps her irritation in a rapid staccato against her opposite elbow. _Not interested in having this fight? Fine. I've got plenty of others to pick. _

"So," she says brightly. "Betrothed to Kylo Ren, am I?"

That gets him. Ben's hand halts half-way to a buckle. He straightens by a degree, as if the tendons of his body were being wound taught.

"Let's not do this now."

"Why not? According to you this is the only room that isn't bugged."

The servant who had led them backstage had said they could use any dressing room they'd like. Said servant's jaw fell open as Ben promptly shouldered his way into Rosshel's private room and flipped the lock behind them. Rey had immediately wedged herself against the door, ready for security to burst in and remove them. While her nerves had come down a bit since, she was still keeping most of her weight jammed up against the door as a precaution.

"The room isn't bugged. But now is not the time."

"It's never the time," she retorts acidly.

Ben looks at her for the first time since he started changing. Despite the privacy, he hasn't removed his mask. Rey catches her reflection in the deep tint of his visor, a nearly perfect replica of a scowling Virya. Just the sight of the other woman rubs her the wrong way.

"Were you ever going to mention it?"

"It's not… relevant." Ben goes back to removing his armor.

"Not _relevant_?"

"It was a one-sided arrangement between Vorian and Snoke. It's not like -"

"Yes, it sounded _very_ one-sided. Especially the part where the entire Inner Circle was ready to throw confetti at the wedding."

Ben throws a wrist plate to the ground a little harder than necessary.

"It makes sense now," Rey continues. "Why she came to you. Why you wanted to help her. Why you constructed this ridiculous scenario. You wanted to parade around next to her and relive your glory days. You wanted me to look like her so you -"

"_Enough!_"

Ben's sudden fury startles Rey into silence. He sees her struck expression and catches himself, spinning away to face the vanity. He grips its counter so hard, she thinks he might hurl the whole thing into the wall. "You have no idea," he says, voice barely contained, "what I _want_."

It takes Rey a moment to recover. "Of course I don't," she rasps, as if she'd been the one who shouted. "How can I when you won't let me?"

Ben's knuckles whiten. He looks the way he did in his room that first night, turning away from her when she'd tried to heal him. Cutting himself off from her like twisting the water off a tap. "We really can't do this," he says. "Not here. Please."

It's the 'please' that gets her. It's so out of character. Unguarded. Vulnerable. It cuts her anger down more effectively than any blade. Suddenly, she wants to cross the room to him. To lift away the mask and take his face between her palms. If she asks him now, why he left her in Exegol, why he's been keeping her at arm's length since his return, exactly _what_ it is that he wants, she thinks maybe he might give her some answers. Maybe.

But if she moves from the door, nothing would stop the guards if they tried to burst in. And if Ben lets her remove his mask, she might accidentally expose him to the entire Order. Rey's hands fist in frustration. She doesn't budge from her post. Because Ben is right. Now is not the time. Here is not the place. They are risking their lives on this mission. And until they come out the other side, there is no room for distractions.

"I don't want you to do this fight," she says. "I'm worried."

His broad shoulders relax in something like relief. His spine goes slack for a weary moment, then straightens again."I know. But we don't have a choice."

"We could find a way out. We could sneak away before this gets out of control."

"Every exit will be heavily guarded by now. He's expecting you to run. And even if we force our way out, where does that leave us for the Frost Ball? Rosshel will just start this whole thing over until we resolve it. We need to do this now."

"Maybe I just don't go to the Frost Ball."

"If you don't," Ben reminds her, "everything will be undone. Maybe not tomorrow but in a month? A year? Walk away from this and everything goes back to the way it was before."

Rey clenches her jaw, knowing he is right. The First Order would rebuild unless she and Ben can uncover concrete crimes committed by its members. Despite the greed and despicable behavior she'd witnessed tonight, there's nothing they can take back to Leia to warrant an arrest.

"Then," she defies. "I'll go back to Rosshel and tell him I refuse any bidder he tries to accept."

"And then he'll keep you here in this house until you change your mind. He'll claim it's his duty as your guardian to keep you under his protection. You'd be his prisoner."

Rey laughs. "He couldn't keep me here if I wanted to escape."

And then Ben has crossed the room and is standing right in front of her. He grasps her wrist, voice lowering. "Stop it," he says, voice like iron. "Stop underestimating him. Rosshel is more dangerous than you think. And I need you to start taking your safety seriously before you drive me out of my damn mind."

Rey blinks, taken aback by Ben's sudden intensity. She can feel her own pulse against the texture of his callouses. He squeezes firmly. "Alright?"

"… Alright." With him bearing down her, she can't say anything otherwise.

Someone raps sharply on the other side of the door. A stranger's voice, deeply muffled, travels through the panel. "Time's up. Is he ready yet?"

"He's coming," Rey calls, wedging her back more firmly against the door in case it tries to open. The sound of fading footsteps puts her slightly at ease.

Ben releases Rey's wrist and reaches for the doorknob, but Rey halts him with a hand to his chest. "_I_ should be the one going out there," she whispers. "You're not even connected to… you know…"

Ben tenses. "I don't need it for this."

"But what if-"

"I said. I don't need it."

Rey sighs. "You better not. Because you can't expect me to just stand on the sidelines if you do."

"You don't have a choice, remember? _You _don't know how to fight."

"I don't care what I do or don't know. If you need me, I'm helping. Then _you'll _be the one who doesn't have a choice."

Ben stares at her for a long moment. Rey wonders if he isn't considering tying her up and locking her in this room.

"It won't come to that," he says finally.

"Good." Rey drops her hand and steps away from the door. "Oh and by the way, when we get back? You and I are going to have a talk about how we do things on our… excursions."

"Agreed," Ben replies dryly, stepping out into the hall. "A long one."

#

When Rey returns to the Vorian box, Rosshel still there. He's switched from champagne to an amber liquid with a deep, smoky scent that coils with his cologne. Spotting her, Rosshel pats the cushion beside him. Rey briefly considers stalking off to find somewhere else with a view of the stage but then remembers what Ben had told her. _He's expecting you to run._

Rey squares her jaw and sits beside Rosshel. He offers her a glass identical to his own. She places on the side table without so much as a sip.

"You'll regret not taking my offer," Rosshel says mildly. "We could have established the New Order with a simple 'I do'. This way is messier for everyone. And I'll be the one left cleaning it up."

'_Like you cleaned up your first wife when she became a mess for you,' _Rey thinks. But part of her wonders if Virya would have agreed to Rosshel's proposal. Has she stoked his suspicion with her flat refusal?

"I've never understood your foolish devotion to Kylo Ren," Rosshel sighs. "It's the only childish aspect that your father never managed to stamp out of you. Even knowing his lineage, you still pine after him… his Skywalker blood. He and his kin are infested with the Light, you know. It plagues him, like termites chewing at a house. It was only a matter of time before his collapse."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Rey snaps. "He's stronger than you could ever know."

"Ah," Rosshel glances at her. "So you _are _still in love with him. That's a shame."

Rey startles. Jerkily, she turns her face to hide the blossoming heat in her cheeks, hoping the dim lighting and veil obscure whatever shows on her expression. More than anything, she is angry with herself for the slip.

Rosshel watches her a moment, then turns his attention to the stage. As if on cue, Ben emerges, his mask reflecting a dozen spotlights, each honed on him.

"But if you still feel so strongly about Ren," Rosshel ponders, "I wonder what it is you're doing with that man."

Rey's irritation ices over at the question. She turns to see Rosshel watching Ben with a calculating intelligence. Her gut drops. Does he suspect the identity of Virya's masked body guard? In her stupid, emotional outburst, had she given Ben away?

#

"Ladies and Gentlemen," the auctioneer begins, "Welcome back from our intermission. As I announced before the break, our second half will be run a bit differently. I described the rules before we adjourned, but I'll repeat them now for anyone who may have missed it.

"The item up for bid is the hand in marriage of none other than Virya Vorian herself. As you all know, Miss Vorian recently became the wealthiest heiress in the known universe."

A murmur ripples through the theater. Rey sees people leaning forward in their chairs.

"There are only two requirements to win her hand. First: you must submit the highest bid. Second: after securing the highest bid, you must beat this man beside me in a duel. Once and only once you fulfill both of these requirements will you win her hand in marriage. Keep in mind, if you are beaten in one round, you may participate again in the next. We will keep going until no one here can continue, or a winner is declared. And now, without further ado, let us begin. Do we have a starting bid at -"

Before the auctioneer can finish, the entire theater lights up. A barrage of figures, flashing so rapidly they create a strobing effect. The auctioneer's dark eyes flick around the room, tallying the climbing bids. They come so fast he does not even bother to declare them. A muscle in Rey's jaw flexes. She'd known people would be enticed by Virya's fortune, but this was beyond what she'd imagined.

On stage, Ben stands like a soldier in the middle of an electric storm. Tall and silent, his shoulders back and his hands clasped behind his waist. Each flash is a threat to strike him down, yet he remains unwavering. Anyone with a fighter's instinct would be wary of his stoicism. The fact that the room is rushing headlong to challenge him is a testament to greed's blindness. Rey watches the perfect stillness of her alleged fiance and wonders how many of these finely dressed people will leave Rosshel's manor broken? How many minutes will it be before Ben has smeared that immaculate stage with blood?

Finally, the pace of the bids begin to slow. The numbers flash, then flicker, then drip, and finally come to a rest. The number has more zeros than Rey has ever seen in her life.

"Number 28 at 1.2 trillion. Going… going… gone to Number 28. Please proceed to the stage."

An older man in a sharply tailored suit stands. "I send my champion in my place."

"He what?" Rey asks.

The auctioneer only nods. From stage-left, a great hulk of a man steps from behind the curtain. He is wearing light armor and steel-capped boots.

Rey turns to Rosshel for an explanation. The older man just watches placidly on.

"Who is that?"

"Number 28's champion, I presume."

"His champion?"

"The man who will fight on Number 28's behalf."

"I know what a champion is," Rey snaps. "But isn't that… I don'r know, against the rules or something?"

"Rules? Did you forget I'm the Auction Master?" Rosshel scoffs and takes a deep sip from his drink. "I make the damn rules."

#

The hulk man rushes, trying for the element of surprise. Ben moves so fast, even Rey barely follows. There's the crack of a an elbow, the crunch of a knee, and then Ben hurling the man's massive weight head-first into the floor where his opponent lays motionless.

The whole thing takes seconds. The crowd's stunned silence lasts twice as long as the fight itself.

Ben returns to parade rest, his breathing still steady. He looks expectantly at the auctioneer who, with a start, announces the start of the next bidding round. This time, the numbers don't flicker quite so fast. Rey is careful to keep her expression blank, fighting back the smile lurking in the corners of her mouth.

The next four champions go down hard. By the fifth, Ben breaks into a light sweat. His mask obscures his expression, but Rey almost thinks he is enjoying himself. How long has it been, she wonders, since he's been able to have a real fight?

"Where do you say you found this fellow?" Rosshel asks, irritation tousled with curiosity in his tone.

Rey pointedly doesn't respond, watching the numbers flicker with bids for the next chance to fight. When the sixth champion steps from behind the curtain, she wields an electrostaff, the live current writhing like a purple serpent at both ends.

Rey looks at Rosshel, though by now she knows better than to hope he'll intercede. "You're just going to let that go? She has an electrostaff. He's completely unarmed."

Rosshel shrugs. "If he chose not to arm himself, that's no one's fault but his own."

Rey scoffs. "Unbelievable."

"There, there," Rosshel comforts. "It'll be over sooner this way."

The woman leaps without warning, screaming a battle cry. Her staff blurs, a purple comet arcing down. Ben waits until the last moment, then lunges. The crack of the staff striking splits the air in the theater. The next moment, the woman is on the floor, writhing as Ben presses her own staff down into her navel. Then he flips the weapon deftly from wrist to elbow and around his arm, planting it in the ground like a crackling banner.

"You were saying?" Rey asks dryly.

Rosshel sighs unhappily.

When the medics come to lift the woman's jittering body, Ben offers the electrostaff back to them. The medic hesitates, then accepts the proffered weapon as if it might bite him. The audience murmurs as Ben surrenders the weapon he'd won.

"Fool," Rosshel comments. "He should have kept that."

"He doesn't need a weapon to beat these thugs."

"Perhaps not for now. But how long any one man last against an entire room?"

"Longer than you think," Rey retorts. But inside, fault lines of worry begin to surface. Ben is the best fighter she knows, aside from herself. But Rosshel has a point. And while Ben is putting on a good show of appearing unfazed, Rey can see the early signs. His reaction times are slowing. His breath is quickening. No single man can last forever against endless opponents. If he was connected to the Force, she wouldn't have any reason to worry. But he isn't anymore.

#

When the winner of the twelfth bid names her champions, _plural_, Rey tells herself she's misheard. But her ears are proven right when not one by five fighters climb up onto the stage from the mezzanine. A Zabrak man and woman with durasteel sabers, a Human man wielding an electrowhip, a Twi'lek giant swinging a mace, and a humanoid reptile species Rey has never seen before. The group forms a loose perimeter, circling Ben like a practiced pack. Rey notices that each fighter has an identical tattoo stamped on their shoulders. This, she realizes, is a mercenary squad.

"This is too far," she protests. "Even if they beat him five to one, wouldn't you be ashamed?"

Rosshel says nothing. At some point, all the ease in his reclined posture has calcified into rigid grimness. He is no longer an aristocrat lounging in the luxury of his mansion, but a furious tyrant seething on his throne. He wants Ben broken. And he won't stop any attempt, shameful or not.

Rey stands and goes to the railing, scanning the theater for every visible exit. As Ben had predicted, each door is heavily guarded by armed men and women. If she helps Ben and reveals herself, they'll have to cut their way out. It would be messy and dangerous. But they won't have any other choice.

As if he feels her thinking it, Ben turns on the stage below and looks straight at her. Faintly, he shakes his head. _Trust me,_ he seems to be saying. _I can handle this._

Rey grips the banister and wishes she could hurl something at his head. He didn't want her help? Fine. She would wait. For now.

The entire room is holding its breath as Ben waits in the center of circling predators. The human man lashes his electrowhip, scorching the stage an inch from Ben's boot. The reptilian fighter gnashes crocodile jaws, flashing rows of razored teeth. Ben stands like a statue amid the taunting, waiting for someone to make a real move.

The reptile loses patience first. It breaks ranks with a roar, maw gleaming under the stage lights. Ben twists, striking with an open hand. Rey has to summon the Force to track his movements. Ben sidestepping, plunging fingers into the lizard's eye, bursting through the socket and then through the brain, the reptile's own momentum spearing itself on Ben's strike.

The reptile goes limp mid-air and careens into the human man directly across. The human flails, whip snapping. Ben dodges, but the erratic motion catches him across the bicep, flaying a gash of char and blood into his arm. The Twi'lek lunges, mace cratering into the floor. Wood cracks and splinters. Ben spins out of the way, his left arm swinging numbly, and the Zabrak male lunges from behind. Ben, somehow anticipating, ducks and drives his right elbow back to crumple the Zabrak's sternum. The opponent drops his sword and keels forward onto Ben's bent back. Ben angles, twists, and then flips the male over his shoulder and onto the ground. The female comes in swinging overhead. Ben jerks back, her broadsword narrowly missing his neck, then slams his fist into the arch of her back. She crashes onto her partner as he struggles up to all fours. The impact knocks the wind out of her and the consciousness from him.

Ben dips, grabbing a sword off the stunned couple. But the Twi'lek is already swinging his mace. Ben raises the sword to block, but the mace shatters it like an eggshell. The blade's tip flips through the air, somersaulting to land in the Zabrak female's shoulder. It pierces clean through her and into the chest of her partner still beneath her, staking them both to the ground. The female screams. Her partner doesn't.

The Twi'lek swings his mace again, not giving Ben the chance to regain his balance. Ben stumbles left, but the electrowhip strikes like a serpent, coiling tight around his ankle. The human man, still pinned by the dead reptile, grunts from the ground as the electricity surges into Ben's flesh. Ben deflects the falling mace on what's left of his shattered blade, managing to shove it left of course. It misses his face but catches him on the shoulder. Even from the boxes, Rey can hear the sickening crunch of Ben's bones.

Ben doesn't scream, but he drops the broken sword to clutch at his left arm, as if to hold it in place. The Twi'lek grins, finally halting his battering assault. He grasps Ben by the collar, dragging him in close.

"Now that you're properly crippled," the Twi'lek growls, "let's see what's underneath that mask."

Rey's stomach plummets. The Twi'lek drops his mace and reaches for Ben's visor. The entire audience leans forward in their seats including, Rey catches from the corner of her eye, Rosshel himself.

Rey gauges the distance from her box down to the stage. If she uses the Force to guide her leap, maybe she can make it down there before -

Ben's helmet cracks into the Twi'lek's face. A vicious headbutt. The Twi'lek's head snaps back. Blood splatters across Ben's visor and slaps onto the floor. Before the Twi'lek recovers, Ben hammers his only good first into the Twi'lek's temple. His massive opponent staggers, but doesn't go down. Instead he screams with rage.

"You dirty, little -!"

With a sharp kick, Ben rips the electrowhip from the human's grasp and flips the handle upward. He catches the live wire in his hand. The voltage buzzes at the contact, sounding almost like a light saber as it feasts into his flesh. The audience gasps. Someone even screams. Rey shudders, her grip making the railing creak. That pain would be unbearable. Debilitating. But she remembers the way Ben had driven a stake of ice into his hand at the lunar temple for her, as if it were nothing to him. That was part of what made him strong. His unflinching willingness to wound himself if that's what it took to win. The Twi'lek, stunned by the act, barely has time to react as Ben lunges, wrapping the charged line around his opponent's thick neck.

The Twi'lek screams, collapsing as purple volts rip into his throat. He claws at the whip as Ben presses down atop him, pulling the crossed line taught with his right hand and fixing it into the floor beneath his left knee. His left arm dangles uselessly from his shoulder. The Twi'lek convulses, and finally loses the fight against pain for his consciousness. Ben lets the line slip, still humming with biting energy. Rey sees and smells the charred flesh of Ben's palm and winces for him.

Ben stands, unsteady and disoriented. Blood and chunks of char stream from his flayed bicep. The angle of his left arm is grotesque. And although he is still masked, Rey can tell from the line of his gaze, the list of his head, that he is looking for her in the crowd.

So he sees her when she screams, "Behind!"

Ben turns in time to see the Zabrak female lunging for him, her partner's sword in her hands, a gaping wound in her shoulder where she'd wrenched out the fractured sword. She slashes, gashing Ben across the chest. He half-stumbles, half-dances backward, nearing the edge of the stage. Another few steps and he will fall into the orchestra pit. The Zabrak sees his precarious footing and screams, charging with her sword overhead. Ben twists sharply, and her foot slips, skating in a trail of Ben's blood. Rey realizes in shock that he had guided her there.

Ben wheels as the Zabrak lands hard on her knee. She slashes, but he is inside her reach now, catching the hilt of her blade as it falls. He rips the sword from her grasp and then slams the butt of it into her temple. She crumples like a doll. The last of the mercenaries, fallen.

Rey releases a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Relief washes over her.

It then vanishes when Ben stumbles, tries to stand, and fails. Panting, he has to drive the sword into the stage floor like a cane to bear his weight. Even after he is up on two feet again, she sees him leaning on it heavily.

The auctioneer, standing like a lost child amid a heap of crumpled bodies, looks to Rosshel.

Rey turns and sees the older man nod.

The auctioneer blinks in a passing moment of disbelief, then clears his throat. He can't quite get the tremor out of his voice. "Well," he says. "With permission from the Auction Master, we now move onto our next round of bidding."

Rey whirls. "No," she hisses. "Stop this."

"Rules are rules," Rosshel says. "We continue until he cannot, or until we run out of champions. Which we haven't."

"You're having these fighters brought up from the city," Rey accuses. "That was a trained mercenary band just now. You'll never run out of champions."

"Then it ends when he is broken," Rosshel replies harshly. "By the looks of it, we don't have much longer to wait."

"Do I hear double?" The Auctioneer asks from below. "Very good, double is bid. Triple is bid. Very good. Quadruple bid received."

A low grade buzz is permeating Rey's brain. _Panic_, some part of her labels it. _Fear._

"Feel free to tour the museum," Rosshel is saying to her. "If you don't have the stomach to watch."

Lights are blinding her, like a dozen little explosions. The mezzanine is a storm of bids, every flash caught and reflected by the gleam of the blood smeared stage. The audience has recovered from the shock of violence and realized what Rosshel himself has: it won't take long before the monstrous opponent in black is brought to his knees for good.

Rey looks at Ben, waiting grimly for his next fight. Although he would never admit it, he won't last much longer. Not without a light saber or a connection to the Force.

Again, Rey tries to feed the Force along their bond. But she meets only the jagged edges. She cannot feel Ben on the other side. Cannot help him. Even though there is so much of the Force stuffed inside her that she is overflowing with it, she cannot share a single drop of it with him. Him, who was the other half of their whole.

Rey is useless. Isolated. After all her Jedi training with Leia. After joining and winning the war alongside Finn and Poe and Rose. After all those long, lonely years in the sand yearning for relationships and bonds. Now that she finally has these things she'd spent her whole life wanting, she feels more desolate than ever. All because a single one has been cut.

It takes everything she has not to scream.

"Come, Virya. Don't make such a face. It spoils your loveliness."

Rey's eyes snap to Rosshel. This horrid, hateful man who she is about to strangle. She'll take his drink off the table and smash it into his smug, gray -

Rey's eyes snap back to the table. To the drink, which is positioned right next to the call button, which is part of a number pad provided to every seat. Rey stares at the number pad and begins to surface from the darkness of her mind. An idea breathes to life inside her like a flame of light.


	17. Going, Going, Gone

"Do I see a half trillion? Half trillion bid by Number 29. Very good, Sir. Do I see three quarter trillion? Three quarter trill to Number 25. Do I have…" The Auctioneer glances up, falters, then trails into speechless disbelief. "I…"

In the Vorian box, Rey holds down the SUBMIT button. "Go on," she urges, staring daggers down at the auctioneer. "Say it."

Rosshel seizes her wrist, breaking her hold on the number pad. Her holographic bid blinks out. But she can tell from the slack expression on the Auctioneer's face that he'd seen it clearly.

"What in the Force are you doing?" Rosshel hisses.

"I have… an octillion…" the Auctioneer sounds as disoriented as if the weight of the number had struck him over the head.

Below, the bids in the mezzanine wink out. The audience falls into complete silence.

"An octillion," the Auctioneer repeats. "Going…"

Rey twists her wrist out of Rosshel's grasp. "I'm making a bid for my own hand."

"Going…"

"But you don't… you can't have that kind of money!" Rosshel protests. "No one, not even the Vorians -"

"Gone."

"Know that for a fact, do you?" Rey asks.

"Number 15, please make your way to the stage."

Rey stands, Rosshel's hand trailing after her like a half filled balloon.

"There's a reason my father always hid our exact worth. Our resources… _my_ resources are beyond anything you can imagine, Rosshel. An alliance with you?" Rey scoffs. "You'd only weigh me down."

Rosshel stares at her in abject shock.

"Now, if you excuse me, I have to go claim my prize."

#

Rey is struck almost immediately by how different it is to be up _on _the stage instead of watching it from the audience. Up here the spotlights are intense, creating a barrier of heat and light — an impenetrable veil between her and all the eyes she feels but cannot see watching her. The collective gaze presses in close. She is keenly aware of the makeup caking her face and the thin layer of sweat seeping into the silk lining of her suit.

And then, there is Ben.

Ben, leaning heavily, breathing raggedly, watching her from behind his mask. His wounds are gruesome, his body wrong at the angles. But at least he is alive. For now, he is safe.

And when this is all over, Rey thinks, she will tear down everything that was ever touched by the people that did this to him.

Rey blinks at the sudden viciousness of her own thoughts. A savageness that had flashed briefly to the surface up from some darkness down below. It leaves her a touch shaken to know it had come from her own mind.

"Please feel free to uh… begin your duel." The Auctioneer says. Rey realizes that she and Ben have just been staring at each other for what must have been an awkwardly long moment.

_Alright,_ she tells herself. _You made this bed. Time to put a show on in it. _

Rey lifts her chin and sets her shoulders. She slides her hands into her deep, silk pockets. She takes her own sweet time walking across the stage, elegantly skirting the blood and debris as if she were sidestepping litter. Because nothing would ruin the aura more efficiently than slipping in her stupid kitten heels.

When she reaches Ben, she stops right before him. She lifts a single finger and places it in the center of his chest. Then she shoves gently.

Ben collapses onto the floor.

It takes a moment for the audience to recover. Then it's fury erupts all at once.

"That isn't allowed!"

"He just lost on purpose!"

Rey turns to glower into the shadowy sea of greed and malice. The spotlights prevent her from seeing their faces, but even a blind person could feel the outrage emanating from the seats below.

"Shall we run the bid again?" Rey cocks her head in challenge. "I'll only win again. I'm ten times wealthier than anyone in this room. And _he_," she points to Ben's collapsed form, "will never harm me."

The audience grumbles angrily.

"Let's ask the Auction Master then," Rey turns to look up to the Vorian box. A spotlight hits her square in the face. She can't make out Rosshel in any detail, but she catches the silhouette of an elegant suit standing at the balcony, gripping the ledge as she had only moments before. Rosshel is caught, she knows, between his greed for Virya's fortune and his desire to see Ben beaten down.

Rey waits for his response, hoping she's right about which vice is his strongest. _What will it be, Rosshel? Going to walk away from an octillion? _

"Even she doesn't have that kind of money!" some straggler protests.

Rey arches a brow in the shout's general direction. "Don't I?"

#

"I have no idea if she has that kind of money," Rey whispers into Ben's ear. She is helping him off the stage, having been named the victor of her own hand by Rosshel himself.

Ben grunts. His arm is slung over her shoulders. He moves with a heavy limp that Rey hopes is a show for the audience and not the real thing.

"I just figured…" Rey continues a touch defensively, "well, you said no one really knows how much they actually have. So I figured no one could challenge it."

Ben gives another little groan. She can't tell if the pain is from his injuries or the astoundingly stupid words leaving her mouth.

"And then I sort of just threw out a number I thought no one could ever match. But I probably… I guess could have started a little lower?"

"Lower," Ben wheezes, "would have been good."

"Anyway, I think we should leave now. Before anything else goes wrong. Can you make it back to the docks?"

Ben nods somewhat unconvincingly, his mask ruffling Rey's birdcage veil.

When they reach the mezzanine, the medics are notably absent. Rey suspects Rosshel has banned them from helping, though they'd rushed in with gurneys and bandages for all the others. Instead, they are met in the mezzanine by a pair of yellow eyes and an ingratiating smile that Rey has come to hate.

"Miss Vorian," The Twi'lek servant greets them in the aisle, heedless of the rows of guests staring at them from either side. "Master Rosshel has bid me to escort you back to your box, where he awaits you."

The only thing keeping Rey from clobbering the servant is her suspicion that Ben can't stand on his own.

"That isn't necessary," she says. "I know the way."

The Twi'lek smiles again. Rey barely quells the urge to dump Ben to the ground and get to the clobbering anyway. "It's really no trouble. After all, the last thing we'd want is for you to get lost. In fact, my Master _insists._"

#

Rey's hope that Ben's limp had been an act is crushed when they reach the stairs up to the private boxes. She has to brace more of his larger weight than she'd expected. She starts to reach for the Force for aid, but hesitates when she thinks of how unpredictable it's been. She decides to make the trip up using her own strength alone. Besides, it would be more realistic for Virya to struggle.

Halfway up, Ben makes a small, stifled noise. That's about all the warning he gives before something unhinges in the column of his spine and he pitches suddenly backward. Rey has to grip the railing for dear life to keep them both from breaking their necks.

"Sorry," Ben pants against the pain, trying to steady himself for her.

"It's fine," Rey assures, barely managing to pivot their center of mass forward again. "We're fine." She squeezes gently at his ribs and wonders which of the two of them she's reassuring. _I'll heal you as soon as it's safe, _she thinks._ Just hang on a little longer._

They take the rest of the stairs much more slowly.

#

The Twi'lek servant draws back the Vorian curtain and Rey's heart sinks. Rosshel and the legal droid are waiting for them, along with the small squadron Rey has been anticipating all night, this time in the flesh. Over a dozen armed men and women stand in a cramped perimeter, guarding every point of the terrace.

Rosshel, leaning casually against the railing, uncrosses his arms to clap as Rey and Ben stagger in. His applause is slow and sardonic. "Well, that was quite a show. I'd ask for an encore but," Rosshel gestures to his entourage, "I think instead we'll just move onto the next act. The one where I get this alleged money."

Rey takes in the armed guards, the Twi'lek, and the hard look in Rosshel's gray eyes. Ben tries to straighten but only manages to barely suppress a gasp of pain as his body shutters out. Every instinct in Rey tells her to turn and run, to find some opening and punch her way through. Violence would be so much easier. Simpler.

It would also ruin everything. _Last resort, _she thinks to herself. _Only as a very last resort._

She tries on a smile that's a bit too thin. "Of course."

She squeezes Ben's hand and unloops his arm from the nape of her neck. Carefully, she lowers him down onto the sofa and whispers in his ear. "Stay."

The fact that he does only makes her worry more.

Nevertheless, she straightens her posture and her expression as she turns to face Rosshel. "I can transfer the money as soon as I get home."

"You can transfer the money here and now. The legal droid is equipped with everything you need to send an electronic wire."

The legal droid steps forward. A panels slides away at its chest, revealing a datapad. A wire transfer form sits ready on the screen. Rey is acutely aware of more than a dozen eyes watching her as she stares at a form she has never seen before.

"I've gone to the liberty of completing my side of the form," Rosshel supplies. "All you need to do is provide your account numbers and authorize the transfer with your signature and thumb print."

"Right," Rey says, realizing she doesn't know what Virya's signature looks like, let alone her bank account numbers. And, she thinks with sickening dread, her fingerprints are definitely not a match for Virya Vorian.

Rosshel is standing very close. As if he might grab her hand and put it to the signature line himself.

"Just give me a moment to review this," Rey says. "I need to make sure everything is correct."

"Take your time," Rosshel says. "None of us have anywhere else to be."

Rey scrolls to the top of the form, just a few short pages, and pretends to review it carefully. Meanwhile, her brain kicks into overdrive. Can she find some way to put this off? An error in the text? Even if she finds a typo, the droid would be able to amend it in a manner of minutes. And as soon as she puts her fingerprint on the sensor pad, their little play will screech to a halt.

Rey scans the document as she would an old wreck picked clean by a dozen scavengers before her. She searches for anything out of place, anything she can use to survive. When she finds it, it isn't at all where she'd been expecting. Her careful eye catches, not on a line of text, but a jagged scrape along the side of the droid's chest display.

Rey frowns. A scratch like that would never be made by a proper key. It almost looked like someone had forced their way in… If she hadn't been a gear head, she never would have seen it.

"What's this?" she asks the droid gently.

"What's what?" Rosshel asks.

"Did someone… tamper with you? Here?"

"I…" the droid looks down, puzzled. "I don't… recall."

_Discrete data wipe, _Rey thinks. _As if someone's overridden its memory drives. _

"May I?" She asks, touching the seam.

"May you _what_?" Rosshel snaps.

The droid hesitates, then unlocks its internal mechanism from the inside.

"What are you doing?" Rosshel snaps. "Enough of this! Stop procrastinating and get to the-"

The chest plate swings open. Rosshel stops dead in his speech. Every body on the terrace goes stock still as Rey reveals an ugly mangle of foreign wires beneath the droid's chest plate. In the center, a large chip sits wadded in putty. It blinks, a little red light in its center like an angry eye.

Beside her, Rosshel takes a half-step backward.

"Is that a…?"

"Bom-!" One of the guards shouts, but his warning is cut short as the Vorian box explodes.


	18. And Don't Let Go of Me

Rey lunges for Ben in the same instant that she summons the Force. Time stretches, slowed by her enhanced reflexes. The Force balloons around them, eager as a dog slipping its chain. Still, she isn't quite fast enough and part of the explosion hits before Rey can fully shield them. The sofa is upended. They fly, hit a wall, then crash sprawling to the ground, Ben on his back, Rey trying to cover his larger body with her smaller one. There is a terrible ringing in her ears.

Rey closes her eyes tight, trying to hold back the explosive energy she can feel ripping all around them. Her arms wrap tight around Ben's chest, willing, _hoping_, that the explosion hasn't touched his injuries. That it hasn't nudged him open by another degree, pushing his insides to outsides, loosing blood and precious oxygen from his brain. She lost him once in Exegol. If she loses him again, doesn't know how she'll -

"Rey." Gentle hands lift her face up. "Rey."

And there is Ben. Or, his mask, looking down at her. He's using _both_ his hands to guide her gaze, which is impossible because of his injuries. Is she dreaming?

Ben props them up on his left elbow, his _bad_ elbow, and Rey sees that the angle of his shoulder is normal. His sleeve is torn but the gash in his flesh is closed, not even a scar left behind. His right palm, which he had nearly cut in half with the electrowhip, feels smooth against her cheek.

Rey opens her mouth to ask, _What? How?_ but finds she cannot. Words are impossible with the explosion roiling around them, pushing against her barrier, her very mind. She struggles speechlessly to contain it.

"Come down," Ben says coaxingly. "It's over now. You can come back down."

His gentle words are incongruous. Rey blinks in confusion, then looks past the Force shield at their surroundings. She sees ash instead of flame. Stillness instead of frenzy. Dust spins like lazy, gray snow. Heaps of roughed concrete, twisted rods, and collapsed beams. And beneath those things, traces of the bodies. A boot. A hand. A tuft of gray-coated hair. A pool of blood matted black with ash. The explosion is over, it's damage already done.

Then why can Rey still feel it? Why is she still bracing against a massive building pressure in the…_the Force_. It hits her then. The exploding power she feels, the screaming in her ears… it isn't the explosion at all. It is the Force itself. The Force swelling inside her, building to rip everything apart. And _she_ is its source.

Rey clamps on the energy inside her, trying to shove it back. The Force retaliates as if assaulted, shoving back at her. If Rey weren't already on the ground, she'd have fallen to her knees. Panic wedges deep inside her, further loosening her control. Rey finds that not only is she unable to speak, she cannot even even move. And that screaming in her ears… she thinks it might be her own.

Ben is sitting up now, pulling her into his lap. He cradles her like he did in Exegol. She'd felt small then. She feels small now. _How can such a small thing,_ she despairs,_ ever hope to control _this_?_

"…at me… hear me?" Ben's lips are moving beneath the grate of his mask. His words are muted, like rain in a dense fog. Rey realizes dimly that he's been speaking to her this whole time. She just hasn't been able to hear him.

"… at me," he's saying. "Focus… me."

Rey tries, steering toward him like a lighthouse in the storm. But the waves of are high and angry. They batter her mind off it's course.

"… can do this… know you can." Ben's fingers skim the line of her jaw. "… right here, Rey… 're not alone."

_Rey. _

She hears Ben's voice a second time, clear as a bell, although his lips hadn't moved.

_You're not alone. _

And then suddenly Ben is _with _her. Not just a physical body holding hers, but with her in the Force, bolstering her in its storm. She sees his face behind the mask, and the world falls away, as it always had whenever the Force connected them, until there is only Ben.

Rey can see in his eyes that he has found her too. That he can see Rey, the _real _Rey, beneath the veil and the makeup and the wig. He reaches out and seizes the Force that is tearing her apart and siphons it into himself, lessening her unbearable load. The relief is immediate. Rey gasps as if surfacing from the bottom of the sea. Her fingers twitch. The Force is still a terrible thing inside her, but it is a little less now. Only terrible, and not unbearable.

With effort, Rey manages to move other parts of her body. She fumbles Ben's hand from her face and clutches at it. She puts her other arm around his neck and pulls him down until their foreheads touch. She closes her eyes and breathes him in, using his presence to center herself. With each exhale, she feeds the Force to him. He takes, tames it, and breaths it back out to her, each time a little less wild than before.

They stay like that. She doesn't know how long. Together, they bring the Force back down. And finally, once the world is not threatening to come apart at the seams anymore, Rey opens her eyes. Within their connection, she sees Ben watching her, his eyes filled with an emotion she can't name. But then he sees her watching him. He realizes what's just happened, what's still happening, and other emotions she knows all too well take hold. Shock. Confusion. Terror.

And then their connection is gone.

Ben's arms are still around her. His chest still against her cheek. But he might as well have been a galaxy away. Where his face had been, there is now only a mask.

"Wait," Rey clutches at his hand. She's doesn't know what to say, only that there are things she wants to tell him. That she needs to. "Ben, I -"

A pile of rubble beside them shifts and groans, indicating that whatever lies beneath it is still alive.

Rey startles. The Force barrier collapses. And then Ben is standing, pulling her up as he does. She can hear screaming from the mezzanine now, though the lower level is obscured by a thick veil of ash.

"We have to get out," Ben says. "Can you walk?"

Rey opens her mouth and promptly chokes on dust. She after a few ragged coughs she manages to nod. "But you? Your injuries…"

"You healed them," he says. "When you grabbed me."

"I did?"

But Ben is already in motion, towing her along by the hand. "Come on. We don't have much time."

#

The air is better in the mezzanine, the choking gray dust thinned to a breathable haze. But everything else is chaos. The refined men and women of Rosshel's event have deteriorated into a mob, stampeding for every exit, tearing each other down when they get in the way. Elegant suits shred at the seams. Gowns wind and twist, tripping their wearers. Jewelry sprays, making the floor a mess of unstable footing. Heels snap, breaking the ankles in them. Rey sees a woman buckle to the ground, only to be pinned there as a the crowd tramples her.

Rey starts forward to help and someone plows into her from the side, like a skimmer plowing over a stone. The only thing that keeps her on her feet is Ben's hand still gripped in hers. Meanwhile, the man who'd collided with her tumbles, flailing as he falls. A hand reaches blindly. Wet fingers smear over Rey's eyes and mouth, and then tear away her veil. Rey freezes, stricken. From the floor, the man looks dazedly at black lace clutched in his fingers, then starts turning back toward her.

Ben steps between them and shoves the man backward into the mob. "Are you alright?" he asks, turning toward her.

"Yes," Rey nods. But in the reflection of Ben's visor she sees the damage that has been done. Her makeup has been smeared by the man's fingers, ruining the illusion of Virya's perfect beauty. Worse, there is an inch-long seam in the wig's hairline where the man pulled. Rey's brunette tresses are slipping out from under the blonde.

Ben pulls Rey into him, hiding her face in his chest. "I'm going to force a way through," he says directly into her ear, nearly shouting to be heard over the mob. "Keep your head down. And don't let go of me."

Rey nods, keeping her face lowered and her gaze on the floor. Ben turns his back to her, big and broad as a shield, and plunges in. Rey keeps her head down, gripping the back of Ben's shirt and ducking her face between her arms. She stays as close as she can without stepping on him and tries to ignore the screaming all around. People barrel into them, some jostling against Rey's arms or shoving ineffectively at Ben's frame. Once, a man falls onto Rey and clings to her as if he's found the last escape pod on a burning ship. Before she can respond, Ben whirls and punches, knocking the man out cold. At least, Rey thinks grimly, if they do get separated she will be able to find him again. She'll just look for the growing heap of bodies that will start piling at his feet once he starts looking for her.

The screaming is growing louder, a pressure building in her mind. Rey tells herself it's the mob for as long as she can, that the guests are growing more frantic as the exits clog. But she can only lie to herself for so long. It is the Force, replenished and straining against its cage. Which in this case, is Rey. She closes her eyes against the immense pressure, glad that Ben is leading. If she could just stop and rest a moment, she might be able to get it under control…

Abruptly, Ben halts. He is shouting something she cannot hear. Then his shoulder blade scissors, back flexing as he heaves something out of his way. The object flies past Rey's periphery, and grunts when it lands. But surely it hadn't been -

A second object hurls past.

Yes, definitely a person. Ben Solo is throwing people.

Rey peeks under Ben's raised arm and sees that they have arrived at one of the exits. The doorway is so crammed with bodies that it has stopped being a way out and is now just a clawing meat grinder of fear. Ben is still shouting, presumably telling everyone to get out the way. That failing, he has resorted to hurling aside anyone who doesn't comply.

Turns out if you toss enough people over your head like it's nothing, even a crazed mob will stop what it's doing to watch. After the fifth flying guest, people start shying right or left to stay out of Ben's range. The slight change in flow breaks the jam of bodies up enough for a few guest at the exit to trickle through. Eventually, people start going where Ben tells them, careful to stay out of his long reach.

If Rey weren't trying to silence her screaming brain, she might have been impressed. But most of her attention goes to hiding her face and keeping her head from splitting open with the Force. When the make it through, she can only tell by the sudden freshness of the air and the new brightness against her eyelids.

"We made it," Ben says, turning. Rey's fingers are cramped with clutching at him, but she forces them to release, dragging through the fabric of his shirt as he turns to face her. She feels him tense with concern. "Are you alright?"

She risks glancing up at him. A cloud of black stars swarm her vision. Her throat seizes. The Force is winding in her like a riptide. It is all she can do to form words around it. "No."

She gets about that far before she slumps into blackness and Ben's arms.

A/N: It's Tuesday and I'm still here! *waves small, triumphant flag* Also, I started a Twitter (handle "Nanirain")! lmk if any of you are on there b/c I'd love to follow you guys. ALso looking for Reylo accounts so pls send any recs :) 


	19. Heavy in Your Arms

_**A/N:**__ I apologize in advance for the lack of Ben in this chapter. I tried many different ways, but this was necessary for the plot. The next chapter will make up for it, I swear! _

**#**

In the end it is Luke's training that helps Rey hold herself together. Remembering his lessons, she abandons her body, useless to her now, and reaches out for the Force. She plunges into a storm, down beneath the waves, deep into its tumultuous heart. She is smothered by darkness, then blasted apart by light. She endures searing heat and shattering cold. She screams her lungs bloody, but the cry keeps jetting through her, somehow, though she's long since run out of breath. Within the fabric that binds all things, Rey is a node of imbalance screaming to be released.

_Not yet,_ Rey thinks, binding the mantra around herself. _Not yet. Not Yet. Not. Yet._

She knows her will is the final barrier around this terrible destruction. And she won't allow herself to fail.

"…_ey!_…" the edges of her name slip from somewhere distant. There is a deep thrumming that might be the Force. Might be an engine kicking to life. Time warps into something vast and immeasurable. She has been in here only a moment. Then an hour. A day. A lifetime.

There are vague sensations, filtering in from a place she can no longer touch. Movement and momentum. Banking. Rising. Falling. Someone swearing. A hand on her face.

She knows that _he _is up there. He is circling around her, desperate but unable to dive to where she is. Ben is like a bubble, trapped on the surface. And Rey is like a stone, unable to rise from below. It feels impossible that they will ever meet again.

Despairing, Rey curls within the energy. She may have sunk, but she refuses to be subsumed. She, will stay solid. Unbroken. She refuses to break apart, even though the Force demands it of her.

_Not yet, _She snarls. Then begs. _Not yet, please. _

Fragments of awareness continue to brush against her. The feeling of her own weight lolling, of being lifted. Her chin tipping back, neck open and exposed. Blood. Too much blood, all pounding through every vein of her body. A cold and howling wind.

Then, the muted sounds of shouting. Voices that she knows. Pain she wants to heal, if only she could reach.

"_… happened!?" _

"_… do to her?_"

_"…kill you… swear, I'll fucking_ _-"_

"_Never should have trusted_ _-_"

_"Help her-"_

"_Please."_

And then warmth. Warmth wrapping silkily around Rey's limbs and back, enveloping her. It soothes the storm, helping her find her breath. Something buoys her, lifting her up toward the surface. Her mind rises and falls. Up, out of chaos. Down, back into herself.

"Her eyes are opening," says a voice. Poe's voice. "She's coming around."

"Oh!" Rose, teary with relief. "Thank the Force."

Blurry faces halo Rey's field of vision, leaning over her. Poe. Rose. Leia. And closest of them all…

"Finn?"

"Thank the Force," Finn laughs. He hugs her. And Rey realizes then that it is Finn's arms holding her. The warmth supporting her is the lunar pool in the Jedi Temple. She is back on the ice moon with the Resistance. She is with her friends.

"I thought…" Finn shudders, then pulls away to get a better look at her. "Are you alright? Does anything hurt?"

"Where's… Ben?" The words come as the thoughts do, bursting like soap bubbles in Rey's brain and mouth.

Finn's face hardens. The arms around her go tense.

Leia, hovering by the edge of the pool with Poe and Rose, glances at the far side. "Don't worry, Rey." she assures. "He's -"

"Here."

Rey turns toward his voice without thinking. Milky water dips into the corner of her eye and mouth, but she doesn't care.

Ben stands at the opposite edge of the pool, apart from the others. He is white as a sheet, dark eyes burning, his expression strained.

_Why… so far away? _Rey wonders, exhaustion slowing her thoughts. Her fingers twitch toward him, unseen beneath the milky bath. _Come here so I can feel you… come and… be with me… _

_#_

The next time Rey wakes, she is in the in hospital wing of base ship. She lays on a standard issue bed, fluorescent lighting harsh on her face. Thin sheets scratch at her legs. A lumpy pillow does a poor job of supporting her neck. Everything aches, as if someone had spent the night scraping at her insides with a rusted spoon.

"Hey, soldier."

Rey turns blearily to see Finn and Poe sitting at her bedside.

"Glad you decided to join us."

Rey smiles. It takes more energy than she'd remembered. "Glad to be back."

"Finally," someone sniffs haughtily.

Rey looks to the other side of the bed, shocked to see who sits on her other side. "_Virya?_"

Virya sits primly in the plastic hospital chair. Rose stands at her shoulder with a blaster that isn't pointed at Virya's head but very quickly could be if she makes a wrong move. Rose smiles warmly when Rey turns toward them. "Hey, Rey."

"Hey, Rose." Rey drags herself up into a seated position, letting Finn help her when she winces. "What is _she _doing here?" she mutters into his ear as he folds the pillow behind her.

Finn gives her an apologetic look. "Leia said we need Virya for the debrief. I tried to get them to wait until you were feeling better but…"

"But we can't wait any longer," Poe finishes.

"Any longer?" Rey asks. "How long was I out?"

"Almost two days."

Rey's lips part in shock.

"Yeah, so, we sort of need to hear your side of the story."

Rey makes a quick scan of their surroundings. They're in a private room, the only door to which is shut. The window allows Rey a view a hallway but no one stands on the other side. In fact it is remarkably empty.

"If you're looking for Tall Dark and Evil," Poe says, "he's getting looked at by a nurse. Don't worry, we didn't leave him unsupervised. Leia's with them. "

Finn scoffs loudly. "Waste of medicine if you ask me."

"Because he seems perfectly fine," Poe clarifies quickly.

"Even if he wasn't," Finn says. "It'd still be a waste."

From across the bed, Rey feels Virya's gaze hone in on Finn like a raptor on a rustling patch of grass. "What do you mean by that?"

"_So,_" Poe interrupts loudly, "the debrief. Big mission, remember? What happened? How did it go?"

"What do you want to hear first?" Rey asks, "Good news or bad?"

"Good," Poe answers.

"Bad," Finn says at the same time.

"Well," Rey sighs. "Someone is _definitely _trying to take out the Inner Circle. Although we still don't know who. I have a meeting with an informant for the Frost Ball, but we'll need money to make him talk. Oh also, Virya might be poor now. Depending on whether or not Rosshel's dead."

Virya blinks. "Excuse me?"

Finn frowns. "So, wait. Was that the good news or the bad?"

"Yeah, it's pretty unclear which one you decided to lead with there." Poe agrees.

"I'm sorry. Did you just say _poor_?"

"There was a bomb planted in one of Rosshel's legal droids," Rey continues. "I think whoever put it there might have been trying to take out Virya and Rosshel at the same time."

"I'm curious what exactly constitutes _your _definition of 'poor'. Given your background as a garbage collector."

"Wait, someone tried to _bomb _you?" Finn is halfway to standing before Poe pushes him back into his seat.

"How do you know they were also targeting Rosshel?" Rose halfheartedly bumps her blaster against Virya's shoulder for calling Rey a garbage collector. "What if he was just collateral?"

Rey shakes her head. "The droid had a contract between Doran Vorian and Rosshel. If someone wanted a sure way to get those two alone in a room, that contract would be the best way to do it."

"What contract is this?" Virya interrupts.

"Um," Rey falters, glancing at the other faces in the room. "It's a bit personal to you and your father. You might want me to-"

"I really couldn't care less."

_I doubt that… _Rey thinks and tries to say so to Virya with a meaningful look.

Virya seems to receive the message. She raises a perfect brow. "I was raised in the Inner Circle. I guarantee that almost thing you say will be able to shock me."

Rey _really _doubted that. But the woman was going to persist… "Apparently, before your father's accident he… signed something over to Rosshel."

Virya sighs impatiently and opens her palm, as if Rey could just drop the information into her hand.

"It was the, er, rights to your hand in marriage," Rey mumbles.

An uncomfortable silence blooms.

"Wow," Poe says. "What a total a-"

Finn elbows Poe in the gut.

Virya stares at Rey for a half moment. Then she gives a half-dismissive, half-amused little "_hmph_." Her elegant shoulders rising and falling once. Then, to Rey's shock, she simply moves on. "So back to this '_poor_' business, what do you mean by that exactly?"

#

Rey spends the next hour relaying the events of the auction in as much detail as she can. She glosses over the part where the Force nearly ripped her apart after she summoned it. She doesn't want to share that in detail in front of Virya. She also entirely skips over the brief moment her bond with Ben had been restored. She isn't ready to talk about that with anyone except Ben himself. Ben, who despite the time ticking past, remains nowhere to be seen.

As Rey talks, Poe grows more intrigued, Rose more concerned, and Virya more unimpressed. Finn gets angry. He sits beside Rey, saying very little. But she can feel his anger mounting. Rey tries a few times to make eye contact, to raise her brows at him in the way they use to ask if the other is okay. But she may as well have been poking at a sandstorm with a reed and expecting it to notice.

Eventually, their huddle is broken up by the arrival of a nurse carrying a tray of water and a light meal. She is the same wiry, no-nonsense nurse who tended to Finn's hand when he broke it on Ben's face. The woman takes one look at the gathering and scowls. "You need to clear out now. That girl needs to rest."

Rey sags in relief. She has only been awake for a few hours, but already it feels like she's been up for days.

"We're almost done here," Poe says.

"Wrong. You're already done. One of you can stay if it's real important. But the rest of you out. Now." The nurse holds the door open with her foot.

Virya stands, clearly over this meeting. Rose, taking her guard duties as seriously as her mechanical work, follows with her blaster.

"We should sync up with Leia anyway," Poe says. He puts a hand on Rey's shoulder. "Glad you made it back, Rey. Nice work." He stands and looks expectantly at Finn.

"I'll be there in a minute," Finn says.

Poe shrugs and heads for the door. But when he reaches it, he turns and shoots a meaningful look at Rey over the top of Finn's head. He points at his friend's back and mouths something to Rey, something that looks like, _'Handle Your Finn Thing.'_

Finn, seeing the sudden scowl on Rey's face, turns toward the door. Poe's meaningful look melts into an easy smile. His pointing finger rises into a lazy half-salute. And then he's gone.

The nurse clucks and comes to Rey's beside, depositing the tray on her nightstand. "Eat this when you can," the nurse says. "You were too skinny a week ago before all this mess. I assume you don't need me to spoon feed you?"

"No," Rey says. "I'll manage. Thank you."

"Good." The nurse takes a datapad from the bed frame and clicks through some forms.

"Um," Rey ventures.

The nurse glances to Rey and then goes back to the datapad. "Got a question?"

"The man who was brought in with me," Rey says carefully, "my partner… did you happen to see him?"

"Hun, they only things they tell me around here is what hurts and which room to go to next." The nurse taps out a few notes on the pad. "I triage everything that comes through, from broken backs to chronic fungal infections. If I saw your partner today, I wouldn't have known if it was him."

"Oh," Rey says. "Right. Well, he's… tall."

This time, the petite nurse gives Rey a look as dry the Jakki desert.

"But _very _tall," Rey clarifies. "And also um…" inexplicably, Rey finds she is unable to find another helpful descriptor for Ben Solo. '_Dark'_ and '_Maybe Evil'_ are the only thoughts that offer themselves. Rey is going to kill Poe.

The nurse comes over to hang a fresh bag of fluid on Rey's IV stand. Then she produces a syringe and positions it in the injection valve running into Rey's wrist. "This is medication," the nurse says, thankfully ignoring Rey's embarrassing babble. "It will help you rest. Give it an hour or so to kick in. It'll make you a little loopy."

The woman injects the medication into Rey's IV. Then she leans onto Rey's mattress and sighs. "This partner of yours. He got black hair and black eyes? A few freckles all over? Face that makes you wanna wear your best underwear but also keep a blaster stuffed in 'em, just in case that glare isn't just for show?"

"Um." Rey flounders like a wet fish on a dry dock. "I don't…" _All over?_

"Because _that_ man, I saw. Took a real good look at him, in fact. And he's fine."

Rey exhales concern she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

The nurse pats her on the shoulder and stands. "He's resting, or he ought to be. I'll let him know you asked about him."

"No, you don't have to-"

But the nurse has already left, door swinging closed on Rey's protest. She watches with despair as the nurse whisks down the hallway and out of sight.

"I don't get it."

Rey finds Finn glowering beside her. "Don't get what?"

"I don't get why you're so worried about him."

"Did you miss the part where we were both in an explosion?"

"No," Finn answers. "I think _you _missed a few parts."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You expect me to believe the bomb is why you're in the critical care wing?"

"Bombs tend to do that to people," Rey replies. "On account of the way they explode. Murderously."

"So how come _he's_ completely fine then?"

"I… I told you, I shielded us with the-"

"With the Force," Finn finishes for her. "And you were both in the shield. But you ended up nearly dead anyway. And he ended up just fine."

Rey's mouth goes dry.

"I keep telling you he's dangerous, Rey. When are you going to start believing me?"

"It wasn't his fault, Finn."

"Of course not. It never is. You two go off together. And _you're t_he one who almost doesn't come back. Convenient."

"He got injured too. He was trying to protect -"

"To what, protect you? Rey,_ look _at yourself. Look where you are!" Finn stands and starts walking, as if he will storm out of the room. He makes it as far as the foot of her bed before he turns, gripping the frame. "You heard the nurse. He's fine. And you? You're in a coma for two days. I held you in that water, Rey. I _felt_ the danger you were in."

Heat burns in Rey's stomach. Her hands fist in the thin hospital sheets. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Finn scoffs. "Of course not. How could I?"

"Finn. The Force isn't easy to understand. You don't-"

"Know what I do know?" Finn interrupts. "What I know is every time you get close to him, _you _get hurt. And I'm starting to really not care how many excuses there are. It's not safe for you to be around him, Rey. It never has been."

"Actually," Rey snaps, "it's not safe for _him _to be around _me_. It's not safe for any of you. So maybe you should just shove off."

"What?" Finn halts. "What are you talking about?"

Rey holds his gaze, swallowing. Beneath her anger, there is fear. "I'm unbalanced."

There. She's said it. Like stepping off a cliff. It feels at once horrible and relieving to say it out loud.

"In the Force," Rey continues, anger failing completely as she admits it. There is only tiredness and fear. Finn stare at her, uncomprehending. "I'm unbalanced in the Force."

Finn's anger dissipates. He leaves the foot of her bed and returns to her side, looking at her with the eyes of her best friend. Her _first_ friend. "Since when?" he asks.

"Exegol."

Finn takes her hand. Rey grips it like a lifeline. To her horror, wet heat pricks her eyes. She opens her lids a little wider, trying to keep the tears back.

"Leia says I could lose control any day. When I do, I might destroy everything nearby. Including all of you, if you're anywhere near me. I know I should have told you before. But I was… scared. I didn't want everyone to leave. I didn't want to be alone again. It was selfish. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Finn says. "I already knew. And I didn't go anywhere."

Rey blinks at him, stunned. "You… what?"

"I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. Not since Exegol, but starting from a few weeks ago. I thought maybe it had something to do with Ren coming back. I still do."

Rey shakes her head. "In Exegol he… Ben took everything he had and used it to restore me. He saved my life, but now I have all of our power. The Force that was mine and what was his too. It's too much. I can't control it."

She feels Finn stiffen. And although he doesn't say it, Rey can practically hear the thought snake across his mind.

_He did this to you._

"Ben was trying to save my life, Finn. He didn't know."

Finn looks like he might object, but then thinks the better of it. He clasps his other hand over top hers. "There has to be a way to fix this. Does Leia have a plan?"

Rey tells him about Force sharing. How she is meant to spread the Force to others who are Force sensitive and lessen the load until they can find a way to repair the dyad. "I'm terrible at it," she admits. "I've only done it twice, both times by accident. I didn't get a chance to try with Leia before the auction. Whenever I deliberately try to connect with Ben it's just… nothing. "

"You don't have to," Finn says. "You can share the Force with me."

"Finn," Rey says gently. "You have to be really strong in the Force to-"

"Like I said," Finn interrupts. "You can share it with me."

Rey frowns in confusion.

"Do you remember when you woke up in the lunar pool two days ago?"

Rey nods.

"Remember who was in there with you?"

"But…" she trails, the memory coming back clearly now. The pieces click together. "You?"

Finn nods.

"Only Jedis are able to enter," Rey says. "The water would have rejected you. Unless…"

"Turns out I'm more than just a little Force sensitive." Finn smiles. "I kept waiting for you to notice it yourself but…" his smile slips a little, "you've had a lot going on."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I tried," Finn answered. "More than a few times. Somehow we always get interrupted. Also, it just never seemed like a good time. I know I needed training. But Leia is putting the cosmos back together. She barely has enough time to work with you. And you… well, like I said I could feel something was wrong. You've been carrying a lot of burdens. I didn't want to add myself to the stack."

"Finn," Rey squeezes his hand. "You've _never _been a burden to me."

His smile comes back then. And Rey finds herself smiling back.

For a brief moment, it looks like Finn wants to tell her something else. He hesitates, then sighs, shaking his head. "I better find Poe," Finn says. "I have a lot to talk to Leia about now anyway."

"Yes," Rey agrees. "You really do."

And then without warning, Finn is holding her, hugging her tightly to him. "We'll get through this, Rey. Together. Just like everything else."

Rey laughs and starts to shrug him off, but the laughs quickly wilts, turning into a teary gasp. She clamps down on it, and on Finn, squeezing him tight. "Thank you," she whispers. "I'm so sorry, Finn."

"Don't be sorry," Finn says. "And don't be afraid. I told you. I'm not going anywhere."

This time the tears slip hot and wet down Rey's cheeks.

And because Rey closes her eyes tight, trying to stop her tears and her emotion, she doesn't see Ben Solo on the other side of the window, halting at the sight, hesitating behind the glass, and then quietly slipping away down the hall.


	20. Walking in the Light

_**A/N:**__ I slaved over this chap and still don't know how I feel about it. It just feels heavy? At this point, just glad to get it up so I can move on... Next week's chapter will be a bit lighter for sure. See you next Tuesday! _

#

Sometime in the night, the ship's generator fails. Rey wakes in the red glow of battery-powered emergency lights, her hospital room all dim and crimson. She tries to drag herself from a drug-induced slumber and is only half successful, thoughts lagging behind sight as she sweeps the room.

There is a shadow sitting by her bedside, mouth resting on fist, ankle crossed over knee, a book on it's lap.

"Ben?"

The shadow looks up. If it weren't for that movement, she could have believed that was all he was. A shadow. Or a dream.

Rey tries to sit but only makes it half way. "What time is it?" she croaks, her voice a dried leaf crumbling in her throat.

Ben unfolds his long limbs, setting the book aside to pour a glass of water from her nightstand. As he leans to hand her the glass, one side of his face is caught in crimson, the other draped in darkness. "Late. Or early, by now. How are you feeling?"

The water is a cool relief in her mouth. Rey swirls it as she considers his question. "Alive. But that might just be the meds. You?"

"Also alive. And I'm not on any meds if that's reassuring."

"Yay," Rey holds out a weak fist. "We lived."

The corner of Ben's mouth quirks. He reaches out and bumps his knuckles against hers. "We lived."

"And… how we do that exactly? I only remember the mob and then passing out."

"I carried you."

"Oh," Rey sips water. "How humiliating."

"They tried to stop anyone from leaving. The guards must have thought the bomber was one of the guests. They parked gunships in a barricade around the townhouse and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to leave."

"So what did you do?"

"Left."

Rey smiles. "Cloaking?"

Ben shakes his head. "Didn't even use it. I just used maxed out the engines. They tried to keep up at first. But not for long. That ship really is a thing of -"

"Ugh," Rey flops her head back into the pillow and glares morosely up at the ceiling. "No."

Ben sits up a little straighter. "What?"

"_You _got to max out the engines before _I_ did. That's just… unfair. _No._"

Ben is staring. She can feel it. Part of her knows she isn't focusing on the important things right now. But she doesn't care. Or maybe the meds don't. She probably should've thanked Ben for saving her life before moaning about him getting to drive a ship that he'd bought with his own money…

"Okay thanks," she grumbles. "For saving my life."

Ben doesn't say anything, just watches her. She wonders how long he's been there, trying to read beside her in the dark… She doesn't realize she's wondered this aloud until Ben answers.

"Not long. The power only just went out."

"Oh," Rey says, sitting jerkily up again to bring the glass to her lips. She hopes another gulp will clear the fog in her mind. It doesn't. "It does that sometimes. Old generator. Junky. Not a big problem though. Except for the hypothermia."

Ben pauses. "Except for the what?"

"It's really cold outside. If the heat doesn't come back on, we'll freeze to -"

"I know what hypothermia is," Ben clarifies. "I don't know why you think it isn't a big problem."

Rey shrugs. "Because we have Rose's…" she trails, wondering how long it will take Rose to get to the generator. If the mechanic was still guarding Virya, would she be delayed? Who would watch the Vorian while Rose was getting the power back on? Maybe Rey should help. After all, she could do either of those tasks. The guarding or the fixing. She'd need to find clothes first. And get the IV out of her arm. And…

And Ben Solo is givng her a very odd look. Something between amusement and concern.

"What?" She swipes her chin in case water has dribbled there. "What's funny?"

"Nothing," Ben says. "Tell me more about hypothermia."

"You get really cold and then you die."

"But we don't need to be worried," Ben finishes. "Because… we have roses."

"Not _roses,"_ Rey snorts. "Rose. My friend? We have Rose's amazing mechanical abilities. She's really good at fixing stuff. Almost as good as me."

"Ah. I see."

"Anyway, the ship's insulation will hold for an hour or two. But sometimes it takes over an hour to fix, and then it'll take _another_ hour for the heat to restart. So that could be bad because if it takes her too long to get down there then hey, what are you doing?"

Ben is standing at the foot of her bed, scanning the nurse's datapad. "Reading your file. Feel free to continue your detailed description of how we might freeze to death. It's very entertaining."

"That datapad is for doctors. Are you a doctor now?"

"No. Just checking on something."

"What?"

He clicks off the tablet and comes back to her bedside. Rey sinks back into the lumpy pillow to look up at him. "Did you get bigger? Like, taller?"

"No. You're just laying down."

"Oh. Right. I am, yes."

He's kind of smiling, and that's nice to see. Rey takes a sip of water to keep herself from smiling back. Her nose bumps on the upper rim of her glass. "What did you see on my datapad?"

"Which meds you're on. Just making sure I shouldn't be worried."

"And are you?"

"No. Apparently this behavior is normal for what they gave you. As long as your pupils aren't dilated, we don't need to worry." And then Ben is reaching, long-wristed and gentle, his fingers sliding into Rey's hair and across her scalp, guiding her face up into the red glow of emergency lights. He leans in very close.

"What…" Rey hitches, "are you doing?"

"Checking your pupils aren't dilated." Those are the words Ben says. But the tone of his voice doesn't seem to be saying that at all. Rey has trouble forcing herself to focus on the words and ignoring the way he says them.

"Are they?"

"No."

"Okay. Guess I can go then. Help Rose or-"

"Not until they discharge you."

"But you just said I'm fine."

"Not a doctor. Remember?" Ben withdraws his hand and sits back down in the visitor's chair.

Rey feels the absence of touch as acutely as an ache. But even drugged, she has enough pride to keep from asking to have it back.

"What were you reading?" she asks, voicing the first safe question she can think of.

"Just doing some research."

"On what?"

"On… things."

"Really? Things?" Rey's hand flops out between them, open and expectant. "Give it."

Ben hesitates, then hands over the book he'd been reading. It's spine is still warm from where it had rested on his lap. "It's dense," He warns. "You're probably too tired."

"Please," Rey rolls her eyes, but then has to blink a few times to bring the title into focus. "_Unsolved Mysteries in the Force…" _she looks up at him. "You're researching dyads?"

"So far just searching. Most of these have been useless." He gestures dismissively toward the nightstand.

Rey squints to see an entire stack of literature beside her water tray. "You went through all of those?"

Ben nods.

"I thought you said you haven't been here very long."

He blinks, then takes the book back, laying it with care on top of the stack. "It helps to be looking for something specific. Also, I'm a fast reader."

"Are you?" Rey finds that surprising. An image of Ben holed up in a library devouring books flits across her mind. She tries to take another sip of water, but can't manage it around her grin.

"Something funny?"

"Just the idea. You, reading." Rey stretches to put the glass back on her nightstand.

Ben takes the glass for her, his brow arching. "You thought I couldn't read?"

"Not that you couldn't," Rey huddles into her thin hospital sheets, burrowing against a chill in the air. "Just that you didn't. You seemed like the type of person who ordered people to read for you."

Ben shrugs. "I read a lot as a kid when there wasn't anything to do. Of course, when my parents were around I dropped everything to be with them but…" and Ben's eyes go a little distant, still looking at Rey but seeing something else. "They weren't always around."

"Yeah," Rey says, suddenly on eggshells. "I guess that makes sense."

She waits for Ben to come back to her from wherever he's gone in his mind. But the more she waits the more alone he looks, and she realizes that he is only drifting farther out. She wonders where he goes when he does that. The things that he is remembering without her.

"What else?" she asks.

Ben blinks, seeing her again. "Hm?"

"When you were a kid. What else did you like to do?"

Ben shrugs. "The same things all bored kids do."

"Like what?"

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know. Anything." Rey shakes her head and curls a little. "I just... wanted to know something about you."

"You've been inside my head, Rey. You know me better than anyone."

"I know," Rey says. "I know I know you. But I want to know _about_ you too."

She's not sure those words made perfect sense. But Ben seems to be taking her request seriously. Rey forces herself to wait, even though the medication puts her on the edge of urging him aloud a dozen times.

"I liked to sing."

Rey blinks. Then smiles. "What?"

"As a kid," Ben says. "I sang a lot."

"Hm," Rey says.

"Not going to laugh again?"

"No. I can see that, somehow. You singing." Unconsciously, Rey nests a little deeper into the sheets. They're doing very little to block the nipping chill. "Okay," she says, happy with her new information. "So what's going on between us?"

Ben blinks. "What?"

Rye nods back to the stack of literature. "Our Force bond."

"Oh."

"We came together at the auction. I know you felt it too. And now," Rey reaches out along their bond, finding a familiar jagged edge. "Nothing."

Ben gives a small shake of his head. "I don't know why we came together. Or why it fell apart."

"I think you did it," Rey says simply, far more easily than she should. The meds have lowered her guard. Even as she recognizes that fact, her mouth continues jogging ahead of her brain. "As soon as you realized we were reconnected, it broke."

"I…" Ben runs a hand through his black hair. "I wasn't trying to break it. But maybe I did. I was… startled."

"No. You were afraid."

Ben stares at the floor, not meeting her gaze.

Even in her semi-drugged state, Rey knows she is starting to push past what he is willing to talk about. And if she pushes too hard, he will only shut her down. Or maybe get up and leave altogether. So despite the haze in her head, Rey does her best to choose her next words carefully, thinking over the pounding in her chest.

"I know there are things you aren't telling me, Ben. And if you need more time then… I can wait." Rey forces herself to say it, though a part of her rebels at the idea of patience. "But you've never lied to me. Even when we were on opposite sides of the war, you were always honest. Even when it hurt. So I need you to be honest with me now." Rey pauses, bracing herself with a breath. Still, the end of her question comes as a whisper. "Have I done something to make you not trust me? Is that why you're keeping secrets?"

Ben closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, capping his long exhale with a quiet, "No. That's not why. I trust you."

"Okay." Rey says. "Alright." She wants to ask more questions, to bridge the distance between them, but she doesn't know where to go from here.

As it turns out she doesn't need to figure it out. Ben is the one to break the silence. "When you were training with Skywalker, you called me a monster. Do you remember that?"

"That was before-"

"Do you remember it? That moment. The reasons you thought I was monstrous."

Rey swallows, then nods. It feels like a lifetime ago but of course she remembers.

"I'm not so different from that person, Rey. That man you called a monster. Only now I'm a monster walking in the light. There are parts of me that I don't want anyone to see. Not you. Not even myself."

"It's different now," Rey says. "You've changed."

"I haven't changed as much as you think. My judgement isn't… clouded anymore. The Sith Masters aren't swaying me. But there are still parts of me, ugly parts, that don't just go away because I renounced the Dark Side. All my flaws, the things that brought me there to begin with," he gestures to his chest, as if the skin and bones were only paper thin. "Just here. "

"We all have flaws, Ben," Rey says. "But you can overcome them. I can help you."

Ben winces as if her offer had struck him a physical blow. Part of Rey feels stung at his reaction, but she hurries forward, trying to give him assurance.

"Even without me, you've already overcome so much. Turning against the First Order? Deciding to turn to the Light? Those decisions _mattered,_ Ben. They make you a better person."

Ben shakes his head. "I wasn't even thinking about those things when I did them. Not really. I… I only knew wanted to be with you. To tell you that we were together. Whatever happened after that, I didn't really know. I didn't care."

Rey starts to object, but Ben continues.

"I didn't have a plan. I didn't think of the consequences. And because of that, you…" Ben's expression creases and Rey knows what he is reliving. A hole in her memories of Exegol. A void that had overcome her as the sabers slipped from her grasp and the strength seeped from her body. A brief period of nothingness before Ben's warmth pulled her back.

There had been moments where Ben had existed in a world without her. And Rey had been dead. She shivers under the thin sheets, whether from the memory or the cold she can't be sure.

Her shiver breaks Ben's reverie. He shudders too, shaking off bad memories. "The heat isn't on yet. Are you cold?"

Rey shrugs, deciding to let him change the subject. "A little."

Ben rises immediately. "I'll look for another blanket."

And without really thinking about it, Rey catches his hand in hers.

Ben halts, looking down. From this angle, he is just a collection of crimson outlines on a canvas of shadow. The line of his nose. The turn of his jaw. A single black freckle marring the line of his cheek. She can only see these little pieces of him.

"The heat will be back soon," she says, but then realizes his fingers are ice inside hers. "But if you're cold…"

"No," he says, even as she sees his breath turning to vapor on his lips. He must be freezing. Of course he is.

She should let him go to find a blanket for himself. Her brain tells her this. But her body, untethered by medication, tugs him down toward her instead. Ben does a poor job of resisting, hesitant but not really putting up a fight. His body folds until his knees are on the floor and his elbows are on her mattress. His face is very close, and she can hear his breathing as well as see it.

"Rey," he asks, a red puff crystallizing. "What are you doing?"

"You're cold."

"I said I'll go find another-"

"You're going to freeze before you find one." She is trying to play it off as casual, but she is gripping him so tightly that she knows he can't be falling for it. "So, just…" she pulls again, lightly.

Ben lowers his face into the bed, sighing heavily. Rey thinks about resting her palm in the valley between his shoulder blades, just at the base of his neck. But she is too afraid to break her hold on his arm, even for a moment.

"Okay," he says, voice soft and muffled by the hospital bedding. "Okay."

And then Ben is half-standing, stepping on the heels of his shoes to remove them. He is leaning on the bed and swinging his long legs up beside hers, the mattress giving under his weight. He is settling the line of his body down beside hers, their sides touching on the narrow cot.

"Just until the heat comes back on," he says, either to her or to himself. He lifts an edge of the blanket and pulls it over.

"Okay." Rey says, hoping he won't change his mind. She tells herself he's right. It's only until the power returns, until heat comes back on. In the meantime, she feels Ben's side skimming along hers with every inhale, drifting away with his exhales. She doesn't feel warm exactly, but the cold is not advancing.

Rey shifts slightly nearer to him, careful of the IV in her arm.

"Does that hurt?" he asks, nodding at the stent.

"Not really."

"Does… anything hurt?"

The way he asks the question, like he is afraid of the answer, tells Rey that he's not asking after her physical injuries.

"Not right now," she tells him.

Ben goes still for a while after that, until Rey is certain he's fallen asleep. She starts to drift off after him, shared warmth and the IV pushing her back under, and then his voice pulls her back.

"I'm sorry."

His voice is so gentle, it feels like he's spoken from inside her mind. The same instant she hears it, Rey wonders if she'd imagined it. She chases after the sound, trying to decide if it was real.

"For what?" she asks without opening her eyes.

"I was trying to save you. When I used our bond to bring you back. But instead, I…" Ben tenses. "I doomed you."

Rey opens her eyes to a dim, red ceiling. Beside her, Ben is barely breathing.

"This isn't your fault."

"You can't believe that, Rey. Because it is."

"Ben, you didn't doom me." Her every word is a visible thing now, a frosting shape before their eyes. "You saved my life. You gave me another chance to fight. I do really well with those."

And as Rey says it aloud, it feels a bit more true. Hope unfurls in her. If there's a chance she can fight through this, then she will.

The tension in Ben's spine doesn't break. He doesn't believe her. Rey can feel him at her side, still blaming himself. Hating himself. And Ben Solo's is a viscous, damning kind of hatred. Rey has no more words left to assure him. She has already spoken in the most truthful way she knows. So instead she shifts her arm, threading it between his forearm and his ribs, and presses their palms together, her fingers pushing through his.

Ben gives at the touch. His fingers spread open around hers, then close, sealing her in.

Rey squeezes gently. "Hey, Ben?"

"Yes?"

"Will you sing for me sometime?"

And finally, he exhales. She thinks its a laugh. But it might be something sadder. He takes a very long breath, chest rising, side pressing flush against hers. "I don't have a very good voice."

"That's okay. I'd just like to hear it one day."

"Alright," he says after a moment. "I will."

Rey smiles a little and she closes her eyes.


	21. What Goes Around

"I feel ridiculous."

"Look it too."

Rey glares at Poe.

He raises a brow in challenge. "Hey, at least you signed up for this. Unlike some of us."

"I didn't-"

"We _did_ sign up for this. Remember, Poe?" Finn leans forward to look down the line. "We agreed. Wherever they go, we go. If that means we need to -"

Perfectly manicured fingers snap beside Finn's cheek, startling him into silence.

"Means you need to pay attention to your lessons?" Virya's voice drips somewhere between honey and acid. "Then you'd be correct. Please try to focus for more than five minutes at a time. I understand that can be difficult for those of you who never received a higher education."

Their little line straightens. Rose, Finn, Rey, and Poe stand shoulder to shoulder in the empty storage unit. Rey shoots a meaningful look past Poe to Ben, who sits on the sidelines on an upturned crate. BB-8 and D-O whir around his ankles. Ben looks like someone fighting to keep a straight face while being forced to watch a train wreck on repeat.

"Now," Virya commands. "From the beginning. Shoulders back. Chin up. Eyes ahead. On my count. _One, two, three. One, two, three. One_ — It is a box step, not a triangle. _Three. One, two, three. One, two, three._ Stop imitating a piece of wood. You're dancing not marching. _Two, three. One, two, three…_ oh by the Force."

Virya stops counting, covering her eyes with her elegantly ringed fingers and drawing a deep breath. Her students wobble to a stop.

"He," Virya gestures toward Poe, "is the only one of you with any semblance of natural style."

Poe sketches a little bow, winking at his fellow students.

"I said a _semblance. _Nothing worth bowing over."

"I like to celebrate the small victories."

"Well, I suppose if those are the only ones you ever have…"

Before Poe can recover with an insult of his own, Virya has moved on to the opposite end of the line, starting with Rose. "You're movements are… unremarkable but inoffensive. Formulaic but technically correct. No amount of teaching will ever change what you are, and so I won't waste further breath on you."

"Lucky me," Rose says.

"You," Virya moves to Finn. "You were clearly a soldier at some point in your life."

"Is that a bad thing?" Finn asks, a touch defiant.

"It is if you dance like you're doing boot camp drills. Try bending your knees. The upper body can continue imitating a plank if you'd like, but the lower body has to move. And you…"

Finally, Virya moves to the center of the line, looking Rey up and down as if she were a grass stain on a white dress.

"And me?" Rey prompts, when the woman's pause stretches out too long.

Virya holds up a silencing hand. "I'm trying to decide."

"On what?"

"Whether there's any hope for you at all whatsoever."

Rey's jaw flexes. "Try advice instead of insults for once, Virya. Maybe then you'd be a useful teacher."

"But you see that's just the trouble. With you I don't even know where to begin."

"All that higher education and you can't use your words?" Poe asks, earning a smile from Rey.

Virya turns to Ben, ignoring her students. "She moves like a man. Of the three of them, she moves _most_ like a man. There's no femininity to her. No grace."

"Maybe if I had an _example_ of feminine grace," Rey snaps, "I could learn some."

Virya smiles, sweeping long blonde hair from her neck. "Very well." She starts toward Poe's end of the line. Then she proceeds to walk straight past him to stand before Ben, holding out her hand. "Shall we?"

Rey's insides prickle.

Ben looks at Virya's hand but makes no move for it. "We agreed that this was your lesson, Virya. Not mine."

"And my lesson requires an assistant. The plebeians need an example of real dancing. Can this little contraption play music?"

BB-8 tips his lens up to Virya and shakes his head, either in refusal to her question or offense at being called a 'contraption'. But D-O gives an excited bobble and, after a soft crackle of static, plays music from his speaker. A lilting tune fills the empty storage unit.

Virya turns back to Ben, hand still extended. "My Lord?"

Ben hesitates, glancing in Rey's direction before taking Virya's hand. The moment they touch, something changes about their bodies. They go straighter, more poised. If possible, more beautiful. Their joined presence unfurls around them, commanding more space than their physical bodies. As they move into the middle of the storage unit, the rest instinctively step back to make room.

Ben bows to Virya from the waist. Virya replies with a dipping motion that should look ridiculous but somehow is just the opposite. And then they dance.

#

The waltz turns out to be a beautiful thing. It hadn't felt beautiful. Not with Virya snapping her fingers and prodding their posture, making them bob back and forth like fishing baubles tangled in the line. But with a pair who knew what they were doing, the sight was mesmerizing. Like the tide, or wind rippling through tall grass. Ben and Virya sweep around the room, perfectly in sync. The hard lines of Ben's body form a frame for Virya's lithe grace; her twirling and leaning, him guiding and tethering, like a sun pulling its planet to orbit. They draw a wide circle, commanding the entire room. Once or twice, Virya spins out as if to move away from Ben entirely, pauses for a moment, then comes back, resuming the pattern.

Rey watches with a pit in her stomach. She wants to look away, but the grace of the dance and her own pride demands that she watch through to the very end. As she does, she can't stop herself from remembering what Rosshel had said at the auction.

_You've spent so long saving yourself for Kylo Ren… _

Rey can see it now, a glimpse of how things might have been. The future for which Virya had been saving herself. The Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, mantled in darkness, fierce and unyielding. And Virya his Queen, cold, cruel, and achingly beautiful, loyal only to him. There wouldn't have been a soul in the universe who'd have challenged them. There wouldn't have been any who'd have dared.

The music from D-O's speaker warbles, then slows. Rey blinks, shaking off the unwanted glimpse into a future that hadn't come to pass. Ben and Virya come to rest in the middle of the floor. He bows, she dips, and the music fades out.

Ben steps back before the final note dies, his hand sliding out from under Virya's, breaking the spell of their dance. He looks for Rey, trying to catch her eye. But Rey keeps her gaze fixed on Virya. She doesn't want to meet his gaze before she's reined in the unexpected emotions.

Virya, for her part, is watching Ben step away. Something like longing steals briefly across her face.

"Wow," Rose breaks the silence. "That was really beautiful."

Grudgingly, Rey has to agree.

"That was a waltz," Virya says, her haughty demeanor returning. "Hopefully you noticed several moments where we nearly separated. Normally, that would be the moment for a partner change."

"Partner change?" Finn repeats. "You don't stick with the person you started with?"

"You're expected to do this with _strangers_?" Poe asks disbelievingly.

"So sorry to make it more complicated for you," Virya says with false sympathy. "But a member of high society should be able to dance with any partner, whether you've known them for five years or five minutes. For the next part of our lesson, you will divide into pairs. Once you can each manage a box step without tripping over one another, we'll try to dance in a group."

"How many days do we have learn this again?" Finn asks.

"Not enough," Poe replies.

"My point precisely," Virya agrees, sending a less than discrete glance toward Rey. "Now, form a line again and-"

A light, chiming noise interrupts Virya's directive, rippling relief along Rey's spine. Judging by the sudden sagging down the line of students, she isn't alone.

"Saved by the bell. Thanks, buddy." Poe grins at BB-8. The droid rolls with excitement as the timer on his internal clock continues ringing, signaling that Virya's morning waltz lessons have come to an end. The group flees to a stack of crates, where 3PO had left sandwich bags earlier that day. Virya refuses hers, glancing at the meal as it were a pile of tauntaun dung.

Rey wedges herself between Rose and Finn while she chews, still avoiding Ben's gaze. She isn't really hungry, she never is these days, but there's no way to get out of eating lunch with all her friends standing around her. Besides, food is a distraction to help keep the memory of the waltz at bay along with the unwanted feelings it had stirred up inside her.

"Now we can finally get to the useful part," Finn says, wolfing down his lunch and reaching for a training saber propped against the wall.

Virya scoffs. "I hardly think this part is more useful. If you could dance half as well as you fight, you wouldn't need lessons."

"When the kriff hits the fan, dancing won't keep us alive," Poe points out, swallowing the last of his sub and twirling a blaster around his index finger. "But these will."

"The only reason for '_kriff'_ to hit the fan is your cover being blown because you're such horrendous dancers."

"You'd think that," Rose says while charging up her own blaster, a heavy model that requires two hands to hold. "But spend some more time around these three, and somehow you _always _end up needing these."

Virya rolls her eyes and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like 'savages' before slinking over to the same crate Ben had been sitting on earlier and arranging herself on it.

"Don't want to join us, Princess?" Poe smirks. "This is the fun part."

Virya replies with a glare sharper than a vibro-blade.

Poe shrugs. "Your loss. Hey Rose, help me set up some of these crates as targets. I'll teach you how to shoot from the hip. But like, literally."

Rey has hardly gotten her fingers around the hilt of her training saber before Finn is at her side, grinning and eager.

"Ready to start training me, Master Rey?"

Rey laughs. "I'm no Master."

Finn shrugs. "Relatively speaking."

Rey grins and swings the training saber at his shins in response.

#

"You're not going about it the right way," Rey corrects about twenty minutes later. "It's a light saber. Not a sword. Not a Z6 baton. Understand?"

"Okay. Right." Finn pants. "Lightsaber. Lightsaber."

"Are you just… repeating what I'm saying without really understanding it?"

"I think I might be."

Rey sighs, lowering her guard. "It's not about the _weight _of the weapon. A lightsaber duel isn't won by whoever hits hardest. The energy blade will cut through anything it touches. Got it? Anything except another lightsaber."

"Almost anything."

Rey and Finn turn to see Ben leaning against a wall, arms crossed, watching their lesson.

"Sorry?" Rey asks, dampening the little jolt that runs down her body.

"A lightsaber will cut through _almost_ anything it touches. But not Cortosis or Phrik. Mandalorian Iron was also impervious to a lightsaber, but no one knows how to make that anymore."

"Got it." Finn says in a decidedly final manner before turning back to Rey, steel in his eyes.

"Right. Er. Ready to go again?" Rey asks.

Finn nods, palming the training saber in his hands. If possible, he seems even more tense than before.

"Alright," Rey resumes her dueling stance. "Whenever you're ready."

He comes at her like a bull. Rey sidesteps easily, batting his saber as she does. Finn skids, flat footed, re-grips his weapon, then wheels to charge again. Rey fights back a sigh of frustration. Finn is physically strong and he probably has the most fighting experience out of all of them, after a lifetime as a storm trooper and then as a rebel. But his movements are obvious and unthoughtful. Rey can predict them with ease. He comes several more times at her, and she dodges each one.

Rey's gaze slants to Ben, still watching from the wall. Beyond him, Rey sees Virya sitting on her crate, looking utterly bored. Rey forces her gaze away, face going hot. She'd criticized Virya for being a poor teacher. But it turned out she herself was no better. She feels embarrassed. Not of Finn. But of her own inability to teach. Self conscious because Ben is watching, and annoyed with herself for letting that get to her. The next time Finn charges, Rey strikes harder than she means to, knocking the training saber clear from his hands.

Finn groans as his weapon clatters to the floor. "I don't understand. Why can't I land a single hit?"

"You're still just… taking the wrong approach," Rey says, feeling useless for only being able to repeat what are obviously the wrong words. "It's not about just furiously attacking. It's…" she searches, trying to find a way to express it the _feeling_ of a duel. The pulse of it. "It's like a pace of movement or a kind of rhythm. Like…"

"A dance."

Ben's words land neatly into the hole Rey is struggling with. She should be surprised that he has found the perfect words for her. She isn't.

"Yes," Rey says, shoulders easing. "Like a dance."

Finn doesn't even look at Ben this time. But Rey can see the words have landed from the way his jaw locks tight. Finn exhales deeply from his nose. "A fight that's like a dance? Sorry but I don't get that."

Before Rey can reply, Ben's hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing lightly.

"Then," he says, "how about we give you an example."


	22. Comes Around

Rey stands across from Ben, light her feet and ready to fly. Her irritation from watching his waltz with Virya has melted into anticipation, a tingling that seeps down to her fingertips. It's an effort to keep the smile off her face.

Ben watches, patient and still. His expression is neutral but his eyes could light up a room. Rey steps left. Ben shifts, attuned to her like a compass keeping north.

From the sidelines, Finn watches along with Poe and Rose. Rey doesn't look to see how closely they're paying attention. Demonstration or not, she can't afford to take her eyes off Ben for a moment.

"When ones of us makes a first move," Ben says to their audience, "it won't be a mindless charge. It will be deliberate. Efficient. Assessing."

To illustrate Ben's point, Rey darts in with a testing strike. Ben steps back, chin turning to avoid her aluminium saber. But his eyes never leave her, dipping into their corners to track her every move. Rey breaks her two-handed grip to jab a passing elbow at Ben's ribs. It's only a graze, meant to rattle rather than harm. She glimpses the corner of a smile as Ben twists away, switching his sword hand overhead, and then bringing his saber swinging down for her. Rey somersaults, aluminum scraping the sole of her shoe as she rolls out of the way.

They come up on opposite sides, still again.

"Um. What just happened?" Rose asks.

"Not sure," Poe answers. "I blinked."

Finn grumbles something Rey doesn't catch, because Ben is opening his mouth to offer commentary to their spectators, and Rey seizes her chance.

She lunges. Sabers clang. Once, twice, again. Rey abandons planned thought to instinct and intuition, their rapid pace not allowing for anything more detailed. She knows where Ben will be before he gets there. And Ben too, seems to anticipate Rey's movements before she's even begun to make them. The fight thrills in her, quickly making her breathless. A dance, she thinks, had been the perfect word.

Rey swings at Ben's left side. Ben blocks her in a vertical bar. But Rey takes it in stride, already knowing he'd be there, shoving off his weapon to spin around for his other side. Ben's saber swings like a pendulum, a flying parry that nearly knocks Rey from her feet. She staggers, raising her blade in a protective block, knowing Ben will press his advantage before she regains her balance.

His blow lands. Rey's arm sings as if hollowed out by lightening. She won't last a second hit. And they both know it.

Ben swings again. Rey drops her weapon and propels herself forward, ducking under Ben's saber and inside his reach. She shoots to a stand, their chests grazing, breath mingling, and Ben blinking at her sudden nearness, giving Rey the perfect opportunity to jam a shoulder under his sternum and _shove_. It's a risky move for the smaller opponent, relying solely on surprise. But it works.

Ben stumbles backward as she'd hoped, but he crooks his elbow as she turns, caging her to him. Rey yelps as the bar of Ben's forearm knocks against her collarbone, panic jolting as her spine bumps along Ben's torso. Getting trapped in Ben's hold would be like being pinned under a landslide. If he got a solid grip on her, there would be no way out.

Before he can do so, Rey bends her arms under Ben's forearm and grips it like a pull-up bar. She kicks her feet up, throwing her entire weight onto him. Ben grunts, falling to one knee. Rey slides out from under his loosened grip and lunges for her saber, standing and spinning to strike before he can -

Rey freezes, her blade pressed to the pulse leaping in Ben's neck. Just the same as Ben's is pressed to hers, a tang of cool metal along the fire in her throat. Rey pants, near enough to feel the combined heat rolling from their skin. Ben is gazing down at her, his eyes bright and alive.

"You never follow the damn rules," he says, a little breathless.

"Rules?" Rey grins. "Never heard of them." And then she remembers the last time they did this. Remembers the glide of Ben's callouses along her arm and around the back of her neck. The closeness and the heat of him. If he did it again, if he pulled her to him now, she wouldn't just stand still and wonder what would happen next. She would -

"So what was that, a draw?"

Poe's question yanks Rey out of her dizzy daydream, reminding her they have an audience. She steps back from Ben to blink at their spectators. Finn is stony, arms crossed over his chest. Rose has found something fascinating on the floor. Only Poe seems unfazed, waiting expectantly to hear who would be declared the winner. And beyond her friends, on the sidelines, Virya Vorian is sitting perfectly still, watching with an expression that Rey finds she cannot hold. An expression like seeing the one thing you've always wanted, and realizing it fits perfectly on someone else.

#

"I want to go again," Finn declares, interrupting the silence after Ben and Rey's duel.

"Sure," Rey nods, wiping a shimmer of sweat from her temple. "Let me get some water and-"

"With him."

Rey halts, looking between the Finn and Ben.

"Uh," Poe interjects, stepping in between the two. "Finn buddy, you think that's a good idea?"

"Why not? It's like she said," Finn jerks his head at Virya. "You're expected to dance with anyone. Sooner or later I'll have to go up against you."

_Hopefully later rather sooner, _Rey thinks. "Finn, I'm happy to-"

"Fine." Ben says.

"What? Ben-"

"It could be good for him. To go up against someone who isn't a friend. It might motivate him to learn."

"Oh, it'll motivate me alright." Finn strides past Rey and Poe, training saber gripped tight.

"You're not gonna stop them?" Poe mutters once Finn is out of ear shot. "Either of them loses their cool and we've got a dead guy to deal with."

"Ben knows what he's doing," Rey says, sounding uncertain even to herself.

"He's not the one I'm worried about."

Finn sinks into a fighting stance, his shoulders a rigid line brushing his earlobes.

"Whenever you're ready," Ben says, as casual as if he were waiting in line for a shuttle ticket.

Finn charges, raising his saber in an two-handed overhand strike.

Rey cringes at Finn's choice. Too obvious. Too early. The attack leaves every angle of Finn's body as open as a book. At best Ben will just sidestep, removing himself from Finn's path. At worst, he will take Finn up on his unwitting offer to break any number of a dozen bones.

Ben does neither.

There is a great _clang_ of metal that lances Rey's ear like a needle. Ben has simply blocked Finn's blow. But Finn doesn't forfeit. Instead he strains, breath choppy as he pushes against Ben's weapon, trying to win a contest of strength. Ben holds, unyielding. A tendon flexes in his jaw, but otherwise he might have been a mountain standing resolute as a train tried to push its way through rock.

After a long, humiliating moment, Ben heaves, sending Finn backward. Finn staggers, barely managing to keep a hold of his saber.

"Now you've learned that brute force is ineffective," Ben says. "Since we've got that over with, try-"

Finn roars, running headlong. Rather than parrying or dodging, Ben steps in and meets Finn with a savage blow of his own. Their sabers clash once, twice, three times. Each exchange sends Finn even more off balance.

"I told you this was a bad ideeaa," Poe sing-songs, trying and failing to hide his concern in the melody.

Rey watches, ready to leap in and shield Finn if she needs to.

Finn tries for a brutal strike at Ben's neck. Ben catches it with his saber, irritation flashing clear across his face as Finn once again tries to push through his guard.

"You're not even trying to learn," Ben scowls. Finn ignores him, teeth gritting as he shoves. Ben throws a loose punch at Finn's jaw to demonstrate that his stubbornness is leaving him wide open.

It was the kind of punch a youngling could block. For Finn, raised as a storm trooper and now a leader of the Rebellion, he should have been able to block it in his sleep. That is, if he hadn't been so single-mindedly focused on breaking Ben's guard. The punch takes him square in the jaw. Finn reels, saber clattering. His hand flies to his mouth.

"That was to snap you out of it," Ben says. "You know better than -"

Finn whirls, rage in his eyes, and in a sudden, jerky sweep, he hurls the Force at Ben.

#

Ben braces for a fraction of a second, leaning forward like he'd done when Rey had left him in a First Order hangar to leap for a waiting ship. On instinct, he reaches for the Force. But Ben Solo has no tie to its power anymore. So when Finn throws it at him, Ben is hurled across the room. His body slams into a stack of empty crates that tumble onto him in a heap.

"Ben!" Rey is across the room before she remembers moving, heaving busted crates and looking for a glimpse of the man pinned beneath. One of the boxes shifts. Ben pushes it off with a groan. Rey clamors to help. "Are you alright?"

"Fine." Ben says. But his face is a storm as he gets to his feet. Rey takes his arm in both her hands, though he doesn't seem to need help. There is a gash across his temple that weeps blood. The sight of it sets something inside her ablaze.

"What the _hell_, Finn?" Rey demands, whirling. "What were you thinking!"

"What was I thinking?" Finn is striding toward them, Poe at his elbow. Finn jabs a finger at Ben. "This asshole punched me in the damn face. You don't punch people in the face during a training spar."

"And you don't use the Force like that against your allies. Ever. You shouldn't even be using it at all. You haven't been trained."

"Well then maybe you should be teaching me how to use it instead of swinging around a fake saber."

"Are you joking? Finn, if you think we're doing Force training after this, you are out of your damn-"

"Have you given it any thought?" Ben interrupts, wiping blood from his brow as if it were only sweat.

"What?" Rey asks. But Ben isn't speaking to her.

"The offer I made you in Leia's chambers. Have you given it any more thought?"

Finn hardens. "No."

"No is your answer? Or no, you haven't thought about it?"

"I don't need to think about it. The answer is no."

"You just said yourself. You need a teacher. Someone who understands what you're going through."

"You don't understand a _thing_ about me!" Finn snarls. "I bet you forgot I was a Storm Trooper, didn't you? Raised by your twisted cult, spending my entire brainwashed life doing dirty work for the First Order. I got my life back from you once. I sure as hell am not giving you power over me ever again."

"Finn," Poe's hand lands on Finn's shoulder. "We get it. No one's saying-"

"No, you _don't _get it!" Finn wrenches from Poe's touch and starts for Ben. Rey moves to step between them, but Ben touches a hand to her hip, staying her. Finn catches the small gesture. His eyes blaze. "You may have everyone else fooled, but not me. I know what you are. And I'll tell you right now, I'm not letting you hurt them. Alright? I'll kill you first."

"I'm not here to hurt anyone," Ben says. "I'm trying to help."

Finn scoffs. For a moment, Rey thinks he will strike Ben and start the fight all over again. But instead he sneers, wheeling away in disgust and heading for the door. Poe follows, shooting a questioning look over his shoulder at Rey. His eyes ask, _'What the hell was that about?'_

She shakes her head, as lost as he is.

"Finn," Poe breaks into a light jog. "Hey. Don't-"

His sentence is cut off as the door slams shut behind them. Rey stares after them a moment, wondering if she should follow. She's never seen Finn so angry.

"Lord Ren, that wound… are you alright?"

Rey turns to see Virya approaching, Rose following with her blaster. Virya reaches for Ben's temple, still dripping blood. Ben beats her to it, touching his fingers to the wound. They come back slick and red.

"It's fine," he says. "Head wounds always look worse than they are."

"Virya's right," Rey lays a hand on Ben's shoulder. "We should get that looked at by the nurse. She likes you now, so we don't have to use the duct tape."

Ben gives a suppressed shudder, either at the mention of the duct tape or the nurse.

_Freckles all over_… Rey blinks, then shakes the memory and ensuing thoughts from her head. "Rose, you can you take Virya back to her room for me?"

"Yeah," Rose says. "Of course."

Virya looks from Ben to Rey, her expression hardening from concern to contempt. Rey feels an ice chip slide down her spine.

"Thanks for the dancing lessons," Rey says by way of dismissal. "Same time tomorrow."

"At least no one bled during my teachings," Virya sniffs. "If Lord Ren scars, by the way, you'll be the one to blame. But I suppose that wouldn't be a first for you now would it?"

"Good bye, Virya," Rey says sharply.

Rose clears her throat, nodding to the door.

Virya scoffs, but thankfully turns on her heel to leave. Rey mouths a thank you to Rose who nods as she holds the door open for Virya, sliding it closed behind them.

#

Once they are alone, Ben sits heavily on a crate that's still intact. Rey finds a wad of clean napkins from their lunch bags and holds a handful to his wound, applying gentle pressure to staunch the blood. "Use these for now. We can go to the medical bay once the bleeding slows up a bit. Otherwise you'll be painting the hallway."

"Thanks," Ben puts his hand over hers to anchor the napkins. Rey slides her fingers out from under his to let him hold it there for himself.

"Do you feel dizzy? Nauseous?"

"I'm not concussed, Rey. It's just an ugly cut."

"Okay. If you're sure. I'd use the Force to heal you. But then you might be carrying _me _back to the medical ward."

Rey smiles but Ben doesn't. A cloud passes over his face.

"Hey," Rey nudges his knee with her own. "That was a joke."

"Not a very funny one."

"No," Rey admits, sobering. "I guess not."

Ben pulls the napkins back, red and sopping. Rey hands him a clean handful.

"You need to talk to him," Ben says.

Rey sighs. "I know. Today shouldn't have happened. It was stupid of me to let him have a go at you. I'll tell him to apolo-"

"I don't care about apologies, Rey. That's not what this is about."

"Okay," Rey says. "Then what is it about?"

Ben hesitates.

"Is it about your mysterious offer to him?" Rey prods. "Are you going to tell me what that was or...?"

Ben sighs. "When you found us in Leia's chambers, I was offering to teach him. To train him in the ways of the Force. He didn't take it very well."

Rey laughs in disbelief. "You thought he _would_? No offense," she adds quickly when Ben glances at her. "But, I mean, he has me and Leia already. And… well, you know he hasn't exactly come around on you yet."

"That much is obvious," Ben says. "And he's right. That's why I'm the best teacher for him."

"How do you mean?" Rey asks, still not following.

"Leia is strong in the Force. But she's… often an absent teacher," Ben says. "And even when she does find time to mentor, she only ever sees the best in people. Even when _I _was at my darkest, she insisted there was still light in me."

"There was still light in you."

Ben tenses but continues. "Leia is an idealist. It makes her a good politician. A good leader. But she isn't the right teacher for him. Just like she wasn't for me."

"Alright," Rey says. "But what about me? I know I'm not a Master. But I can still teach Finn a thing or two about the-"

"Being around you makes it worse."

"What do you mean? Makes what worse?"

"The thought of losing you, or even just letting you down, it feeds all his insecurities and resentment. You haven't noticed, but I have. I know the signs better than anyone."

"Ben," Rey says sharply, a spike of anxiety nailing her in place. "What signs? What are you saying?"

Ben looks up at her, blood seeping through the napkins and a graveness in his eyes. "I'm going to say something now that you won't want to hear. Alright?"

Rey just stares at him.

"Your friend needs help. And he needs it soon. If he continues the path he's on, it will lead him to the dark side."

_A/N: I promise this fic is NOT going to make Finn a main character. This fits. I promise. I hope._


	23. The Hardest of Hearts

"You don't know what you're talking about. There's no way Finn would ever turn."

An hour later, Rey, Ben and Leia sit in the general's tea room. Leia stares into the fireplace, its light skating around her features. It makes her look tired. Old. Ben leans against the mantle, the neat lace of butterfly bandages seaming his temple. Rey paces the hearth, fuming.

"We have to consider the possibility," Leia sighs. "I didn't see the signs. But I won't dismiss them now that they've been brought to my attention."

"There haven't been any signs!" Rey insists. "I know Finn better than anyone."

"And I know the Dark Side."

Rey's gaze snaps to Ben, glaring openly. Ben stares back, refusing to back down.

"Look, Finn had already rejected the First Order and the dark side before he met any of us. He risked everything to get away from them. There's no way he would turn!"

"When Finn was a Storm Trooper, he didn't have anything to risk but his own life. Now he has something more important. Friends. Family. You. Things he loves but feels powerless to protect. He wants the strength to save what he's afraid to lose. And that's one of the dark side's sweetest promises. The Skywalkers know it all too well."

"Fear is the path to the dark side," Leia says softly to herself.

"What?" Rey snaps, more sharply than she'd intended.

"Something I read once in the Jedi texts," Leia speaks up. "One of Master Yoda's teachings. _Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering._ It's a path to the dark side."

"I don't believe this," Rey scoffs, turning from them both. She starts for the door. "I'm not going to listen to nonsense. Just because you have a personal problem with him, doesn't mean-"

Ben catches her wrist. Rey tries to yank free.

"Rey, this isn't a personal problem. You think I wanted to tell you this? You think I didn't know how much it would hurt you?"

Rey stops pulling, staring at the floor instead of Ben's eyes.

"I've been watching him for days. If I were still connected to the Force, I'd be able to _feel _the darkness growing in him. You could too. If you'd been looking for it."

Rey swallows, her throat almost too tight for words. "He's my friend, Ben. The first friend I ever had."

"I know. I'm not saying it's too late. Just that we need to be conscious of the danger. Finn needs to be mentored. Guided. He probably doesn't even realize the line he's walking. I didn't. Not until it was too late."

Rey hesitates, conflicted. To help Finn would be like an insult, admitting even the possibility of his darkness. To ignore it, if it _was_ truly there, would be to condemn him. Ben's words are not so different from what Rey herself had said to Luke when she'd learned of Ben's childhood. Only now she is the furious and unyielding one, forcing the world into a rubric of Good and Evil. And Ben is asking her to see something she doesn't want to acknowledge. She sags a little into his grip.

"What are you saying we should do?" she asks softly.

"Talk to his friends," Ben says. "Dameron and the mechanic. Tell them to keep an eye on him. And you'll need to convince Finn to accept me as a teacher."

"He'll never-"

"We can teach him together if that's easier. But I have to be there. When he's around you, he's too desperate to prove himself. And to protect you. Those feelings make him vulnerable to darkness."

"And you really think seeing us together is going to be good for him?" Rey challenges, pushing into unspoken territory. Finn's jealousy over something that Rey and Ben hadn't even acknowledged to one another.

Ben hesitates. "I think it's better than the alternative."

"If Rey's right," Leia says, "then we have nothing to lose by having you both mentor him in the Force. If Ben is, then the risks are too high to be ignored. We err on the side of caution until we decide otherwise."

Rey doesn't respond for a long moment, holding Ben's gaze. Then finally, she relents. "Alright. I'll try. But I don't know if he'll listen to me."

"He will," Ben says, fingers slipping from Rey's wrist. "He has to."

Leia sighs, still troubled. "I'd been having Finn and Poe join some of our council meetings. But perhaps that was a mistake. I'll relieve Finn of his New Republic duties until-"

"No," Ben says sharply. "Don't try to fix this by isolating him. It won't work."

Leia frowns. "The Republic is in a delicate time, Ben. If I can't trust Finn to be in a position of power, then-"

"You'll tell yourself you're trying to protect him, but you won't be. He'll know you're pushing him away. Keeping things from him. Maybe because you're trying to help, but also because you don't really trust him. He'll feel that. He'll resent you for it."

Leia stares at her son. A painful, heavy silence stretches between them. "Ben. I never meant to-"

"Don't," Ben says, cutting Leia off. "Just… don't send him away telling yourself you're trying to protect him."

"Alright," Leia nods. "I won't."

#

That night Rey doesn't sleep. She goes through all the motions, laying in her cot with the sheets pulled to her chest, closing her eyes and forcing herself to be still. But stillness only carves a pit inside her, and it fills with fragmented memories of the past few weeks. Finn going off the rails when he first discovered Ben in the storage locker. How he'd lashed out at Leia when she'd tried to stop him, no longer discriminating between enemies and allies who tried to get in his way. The disgust in his voice when he called Ben a monster. The hatred and superiority when he declared he wouldn't let Ben hurt anyone.

Instinctively, Rey reaches out, her palm flattening on the wall that separates her room from Ben's. She wonders if he is sleeping alongside her, only separated by a sheet of metal.

When the clock reads 3:45a.m., Rey gives up. She kicks the sheets away, moving in the dark so as not to stir D-O, who sits beside her bed in sleep mode. She dresses, a pair of utility pants and a standard issue tank, and pulls her boots on at the door. With physical relief, she steps out of her room.

Rey tells herself she is going for a walk. And she does just that, at first. She walks the entire loop of the dormitory hall, trying to wear herself down. After she completes the loop three times, she finds herself standing outside Ben's door.

She's more than a little surprised at herself. She'd expected to still be angry with him. And she is, in part. But she'd rather be angry right next to him than on the other side of some stupid wall.

And so, before she can think too hard about what she's doing, she knocks.

There is no response.

_He won't answer,_ Rey tells herself. _He's asleep. Like you should be. _

Still, she doesn't move from the doorstep. Just in case.

_If he doesn't answer, I'll just leave. I'll go back to my room and I won't mention this to anyone. _

Then the door opens and Ben is there, solid and warm and real. Alive. Rey knows it's irrational that she still thinks that way sometimes. Maybe it's the sleeplessness, but part of her is relieved just to see him standing there. If she could feel him in the Force, maybe it would be easier for her to believe he won't just vanish again.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi."

_'Can I come in?' _She wrestles with the question but can't seem to push it off the tip of her tonue. _He's going to think you're crazy_, she tells herself. _He's going to ask if you have any idea what time it is. _

But instead Ben just steps aside, without asking her a single thing.

#

Ben hadn't been in bed. Rey can tell because it's perfectly made in the glow of his single desk lamp. The desk, on the other hand, is a mess. Books sit in stacks and lopsided piles. Paper scraps turned into homemade bookmarks jut from pages at odd angles. Entire sections are folded with dog eared corners. One small cover lays open with notes scribbled on its pages, a pen clipped to its top corner. Rey recognizes Ben's handwriting from the note he'd slid under her door all those weeks ago. The one she still hasn't gotten around to throwing out.

"Couldn't sleep?" Rey asks, as if she hadn't been the one to knock on his door at four in the morning.

"I rarely do," he says.

Rey nods, taking in the room. It's practically empty. No personal belongings. No photographs or souvenirs. Just the books. She nods at them. "More dyad research?"

"Yes."

"Anything useful?"

"Nothing useful, no." Ben steps over and closes the book left open. "Just more things I don't want to hear."

Rey nods again, aware that she has hit a dead end in the conversation.

"Do you want to sit?" Ben asks, taking the chair for himself and gesturing her toward the bed.

Rey sits on the side of Ben's bed. The sheets are crisp and cool to the touch, confirming her suspicion that Ben hadn't been in them when she knocked. Ben turns his chair around to face her. The room is narrow enough that she could straighten her knees and slide her ankles between his.

"I think I owe you an apology," Rey says, words leaving mouth before she herself is aware of them. "I reacted badly today. I guess I don't have much left by way of emotional reserves. I know you're trying to help. It's just-" To her horror, a wet heat pricks her eyes. Rey looks down into her lap, forcing the sting back down. She will not cry in front of Ben Solo. She sighs. "Just a mess."

"I was sorry I had to tell you. Everything I touch in your life falls apart."

Rey shakes her head. "It's not you. Just a running theme of mine at the moment."

She hears Ben shift in his chair but she doesn't look up, not even when his weight settles next to her on the bed. His hand covers hers.

"I feel so stupid," she admits. "If I'd been paying more attention-"

"Don't," Ben interrupts, squeezing her hand. "You're on the side of the Light. You couldn't have noticed sooner."

"Do you think he's in real danger?"

"I think we can still help him," Ben says. "If he wants it. You can bring him to the light. And I can steer him from the dark."

Rey draws a deep breath and nods. "Alright. Okay."

The words ease some of the tension wound around her spine. She thinks briefly, insanely, of collapsing backward into Ben's bed. It hadn't seemed reasonable, natural even in the hospital. But now…

"Have you slept at all?" Ben asks.

"No. I guess I should go back to my room and try. Not like I've got anything better to do for the next few hours."

Rey stands, but Ben doesn't. And he keeps ahold of her hand. She goes briefly into a blurry memory of the hospital, her pulling him down to lay beside her. She does her best to keep a neutral face. "Unless you had something in mind?"

Faintly, Ben smiles.

#

"Remember, she has more power than anything you're used to. Don't shift too early and strip the gear. And don't-"

"Ben. Please. Don't insult me." Rey pulls in the clutch and gently revs the throttle of the yet unnamed racing ship. It purrs like thunder cooing. Rey lets the subtle gravity of the ice moon tow them around in its orbit, until she finds a path that's clear of the main planet or any of its other moons.

"I'll try to go a little easy on you," she smirks toward Ben. Then she guns it.

Acceleration slams them back into their seats, pushing breath out of them. Rey thrills as she builds revs and seamlessly shifts upwards, bolstering the engine, expecting to find a limit and just getting more and more. At the pull of her fingers, the smoothest, sleekest power feeds into the thrusters, turning their surroundings a blur of space and starlight.

They skate the ring of an asteroid belt, then curve around a star that burns warm and golden overhead. They dip into a cloud of interstellar dust, a nebula with insides like a great pillared temple. They weave through columns of violet, amber, and blue.

The ship is like a living thing, feather sensitive to Rey's touch, as if it is listening to her thoughts and emotions instead of her fingers and feet. She rolls the throttle, and the ship roars, hitting that perfect sweet spot of power and speed. And Rey feels weightless. Untouchable. Free.

It is, she thinks, the purest flight she has ever known.

Finally, after four more arcing climbs and barrel rolls, she brings the ship to a stop in the outer atmosphere of a little gaseous planet, gleaming opalescent against the black velvet of space. Creamy clouds wisp around the ship's glass, shot through with the palest shimmers of pink, blue, and lavender.

"That was _amazing!_" Rey squeals. Then she realizes she'd been so busy enjoying herself, she hadn't even tried to go easy on her passenger. "Oh," she turns, expecting to find Ben pale and shaky in the passenger seat, like most of her first-timers. An apology is half out of her mouth when she sees the look on his face, and it stops her dead.

Ben Solo is alight. The joy on his face is almost boyish. He breathes out a curse and then says, "Yes. It was."

_Huh, _Rey thinks, her own grin softening as she takes his in. _He really is Han's son. _

"What?" Ben asks, raising an eyebrow at her prolonged gaze. The smile lingers soft around his eyes and mouth. "What are you doing?"

"Memorizing."

"What?"

"It's the first time I've seen you smile like that."

Ben shakes his head and laughs. "Well, it might be the last time. You fly like a madwoman."

Rey shoves his shoulder. "Don't act like you don't love it."

Ben meets her eyes then, pinning her in place. "Alright. I won't."

Rey's breath hitches. It doesn't come back until Ben breaks his gaze, sitting back in his seat. He makes a show of tightening his seatbelt and then sweeps his hand toward the vast expanse of space. "Well?" he challenges, "Was that it? Show me what else you've got."

**A/N:**_ Hold onto your heart, cause I'm coming to break it._


	24. Little Do You Know

Over the next few days, Rey finds some semblance of a routine. Every morning she meets Finn and Poe in the mess hall for breakfast, and then together they descend into the storage unit to meet Ben, Rose, and Virya for waltz lessons. Virya continues picking them into pieces, but her venom starts to lessen. She lets them work in pairs, then in a group with partner changes. This, Rey is told, is what will be expected of her at the Frost Ball.

It only takes a few sessions for Rey to stop feeling awkward with Finn and Poe, but she still feels self conscious whenever she spins into Ben's arms. In the back of her mind dances the memory of Virya and Kylo Ren, the regal couple commanding an entire room. She tries not to think what she and Ben must look like in comparison. What they _will _look like in front of the entire Inner Circle, Rey all stiff and half a step behind, relying on Ben to correct her missteps. Even when she makes no mistakes at all, it is a breath of relief when the music transitions and she can whirl away.

After morning dance, they break for combat training. Poe keeps offering to show Virya how to shoot a blaster, until one day she snatches it from him, clicks off the safety, and fires off two shots in an eye blink. The first narrowly misses Poe's left ear, the second his right, framing his stupefied expression with two smoldering holes in the wall.

Virya stuffs the blaster back in Poe's frozen hand. "I'm wealthy. Not helpless."

"Right," Poe stares with parted lips as Virya turns and primly sits on her crate. "Okay. Yeah. Great."

Rose berates him for the next half an hour about arming a prisoner.

Poe defends himself with a weak, "Rose, look at her. I didn't think she could find a trigger unless it was made of diamonds."

Finn refuses to work with Ben at first, until Rey explains that he will be helping them both connect with the Force. After all, Ben knows more about it than Rey herself, she explains, and Leia had asked him to help. Finn clearly hates the idea of it but he grudgingly goes along. It seems the only thing stronger than his dislike of Ben is his desire to learn about the Force.

And so together, Rey and Ben start teaching Finn. About both the Light and the Dark. And as Finn begins to better understand the concepts of balance, he is able to do more and more. He tempers his brutish fighting style and starts wielding the training saber with some skill. After a week, he can make a small object rattle when he tries to lift it of the floor. It is rewarding for Rey in a way that she hadn't expected. Even more satisfying than her own rocky training had been under Luke.

And it turns out the excuses Rey had given Finn aren't entirely wrong. Ben _does_ know more about the Force than she had ever had the chance to learn, from Luke, Leia, and her own studies combined.

"In order to be powerful in the Force," Ben explains afternoon. "You must understand your own motivations for using it. Only when your mind is clear will you be able to align the Force to your cause."

"Is that why you were so much more powerful when you were with the Order?" Finn asks a bit acidly. "Because you weren't trying to be anything more than a-"

"_Finn_," Rey warns.

But Ben answers anyway. "No. I had more power then because I hadn't given it all up to save Rey's life."

That shuts them up. Both Finn and Rey. Ben holds Finn's gaze until the other man looks at the floor. Rey clears her throat, breaking the brief but awkward silence.

"Lets focus on the lesson, shall we? Close your eyes, Finn. Search inside yourself and tell us why you want to use the Force."

Finn closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I want to use the Force to protect people."

"Who," Ben presses. "Be specific."

Finn opens his eyes. "What do you mean, who? The ones who need protecting."

"Almost every life in the universe needs protection from one thing or another. But who do you carry closest to you? The innocent? Younglings? Other reformed storm troopers?"

Finn glares. "I don't know, all of the above? What kind of sick bastard wouldn't protect the innocent?"

"We're not saying you wouldn't," Rey steps in. "I know you'd protect them if the need arose. But Ben's asking what drives you. Whose protection do you value most?"

Finn's expression is of barely contained frustration. He thinks this exercise is a waste of time.

"If you can't frame it in the positive, try in the negative," Ben says. "What keeps you up at night? Gives you nightmares? The answer is different for each of us, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. When you follow the root of your desire to protect, there's always some thing or some _one_ at the base of it. What's yours?"

Finn glances at Rey.

She nods at him encouragingly.

Finn sighs, closing his eyes and resuming his meditative posture. "I guess… I don't know, my friends. My family."

"Good," Ben says. "And why do they need protection?"

Finn frowns slightly but doesn't open his eyes. "Something might happen to them. They're warriors. They do dangerous things. I want to help. To keep them safe."

"Don't all warriors do dangerous things?" Ben presses. "Isn't that risk something they've taken on willingly? That they've trained for?"

"Yes," Finn answers.

"And haven't your friends proven themselves as some of the strongest men and women in the universe?"

"…Yes."

"So," Ben says gently. "Why do you feel such a deep, driving need to protect them? There are certainly others who need it more."

Rey glances at Ben. His gentle, encouraging tone betrays no sign that he already knows Finn's answer. Instead, Ben is giving his student the space to discover it for himself.

"Because," Finn says, and Rey can practically feel him sifting through the sand of his mind, digging for a kernel of truth. "Because if anything happened to them, I'd be alone again. Like before, I'd… have nothing."

Finn's eyes open, clouded with confusion. He seems almost taken aback at his own answer. Troubled by what he's found.

"So the feelings you have," Ben says, "the drive to take the Force and become stronger. Part of it is because you want to protect others. But beneath that, there is fear. Fear of losing your friends. Fear of having nothing. That fear is powerful but also dangerous, Finn. To move forward in your training, you have to acknowledge it. And then, overcome it."

Finn frowns. He opens his mouth to protest or deny, but the words don't come.

"It's alright," Rey says assuringly. "I was afraid too once. Afraid of being alone. Afraid I'd lost people who loved me before I even got a chance to know them. I thought the Force was a solution. I tried to use it. To _make_ it show me a place where I belonged. Instead it brought me to darkness and no answers. I felt betrayed. More alone than ever." Rey glances toward Ben. She smiles faintly. "But I wasn't. And you don't have to be either."

#

The generator goes on the fritz again, to Rose's sleepless frustration, plunging the ship into red emergency lighting and frigid temperatures without warning. Whenever it happens late at night, Rey always finds herself standing outside Ben's door, her blankets in her arms, asking herself what in the Force she's doing, but knocking anyway. He always lets her in without asking, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. As if she lives there with him in that little room. She wonders, if she were to just open his door instead of knocking, would he even mind?

Most nights he's up researching dyads, no matter if it's two, three, or four in the morning. The bed is always cold and neat and the books are all dogeared and yellow in a halo of his flashlight, which he's taped to the wall for power cuts. Wordlessly, Rey throws her blankets on top of his and burrows under the double layer to protect against the chill. She leaves a space for him in the narrow bed, even though it means cramming herself flush against the wall until her shoulder aches. He almost never takes her up on the unspoken offer, staying up to read instead. But sometimes, if she goes completely still so that he thinks she's sleeping, he'll softly lift the blankets and lay alongside her for an hour or two. Never touching. Never speaking. He is always completely still beside her, which is how Rey knows he doesn't want her to wake. He doesn't want her to know.

In the mornings, when she sits to rub real sleep from her eyes, Ben is always back at his desk, as if he'd never left it. She plays along and doesn't bring it up. She doesn't even mention the fact that she comes over whenever the generator fails. She tells herself its because it isn't worth mentioning. It's not a big deal. But really, she's afraid that if she acknowledges it, he'll stop opening the door.

#

One day during Force exercises, Finn and Rey share the Force. It isn't intentional. At least, not on their part. One moment they are simply doing a guided meditation, following Ben's instructions, and the next they are linked. It is not what Rey and Ben had had at the auction house. It's nothing nearly as powerful or profound. It's more like someone flips a light on the other side of a window, and Finn's shadow is behind a pane of frosted glass. Rey startles, nearly shattering the fragile connection, but Ben grips both their shoulders tight.

"Don't open your eyes. Either of you. Don't break your concentration. You're connected in the Force. Finn, there's an energy inside her. Can you feel it?"

"I - y-yes of course, I can feel it," Finn stammers. "It's too much to _not_ feel."

"That's the Force. And you're right, she has too much of it. She is unbalanced. If you think you can manage, I want you to take a little from her. Do you think you can do that?"

"I'll try."

A foreign presence tugs on her, as if someone has found a loose thread and is trying to pull it straight through her skin. Rey tenses instinctively. It feels all wrong.

"Don't fight him, Rey." Ben says softly, his hand firm on her shoulder. "Don't close him out. Let him help you."

And so, because Ben asks it of her, Rey forces herself to relax. She even tries to push a little of her power out toward Finn. Judging by his sharp exhale, it reaches him. And then Rey feels something, like an unspooling of her insides. A vague but uncomfortable feeling. The Force is passing from her to Finn.

"Alright," Ben says. "That's enough for now."

Rey opens her eyes.

"We did it?" Finn turns to Ben, forgetting his mistrust of the man as he looks to him for approval. Ben nods, and Finn beams at Rey. "Yes! We did it! Rey, we're Force sharing! We're going to save you!"

Rey forces a smile and nods. But as soon as Finn stands to tell Rose and Poe, Rey looks to Ben.

A smile is trying it's best in the corner of his mouth. But the look in Ben's eyes hollows out her chest.

"Congratulations. Now your life won't be in constant danger anymore."

"Ben," Rey reaches for him, seeking out his hands. "What did you-"

"Shit." The loud scrape of a storage crate slices through Rey's question. The whole room turns to see Virya suddenly standing, staring down at her handheld comm device. The Vorian swears again.

"What is it?" Rey asks, standing along with Ben. "What's wrong?"

Virya just stares at the screen, her dark eyes rapidly scanning text.

"You okay there, Princess?" Poe asks, keeping a wary hand on his blaster as he steps closer.

Virya looks up in a flutter of lashes. Her dark eyes immediately lock onto Ben, as if there's no one else in the room. "It's the Inner Circle's private channel. They've just sent confirmation."

"Confirmation of _what_?" Ben is striding toward her, already reaching for the device.

"Is it the Ball?" Finn asks. "Are they moving it like the auction?"

Virya lets Ben take the comm device straight from her hand.

"It's Rosshel. He's dead."

center#/center

Rose takes Virya back to her rooms while the others go straight to Leia's quarters. Rey, Ben, Finn, and Poe, each instinctively post up in the corners of the room. The General arrives still dressed in her debate suit, having left her political meetings on emergency notice. Once she hears the news she sends C-3P0 to tell the Council they'll have to reconvene tomorrow.

"Do we know what actually killed him?" Leia asked.

"The official party line is that he's been in critical care since the explosion and only just died from his injuries today," Ben says, thumbing through the alert on Virya's comm device. He had kept it without even a word of protest from it's owner. "But I find that unlikely. Rosshel had access to the best medical teams in the galaxy. Either someone got to him later and is covering it up, or he's actually been dead since the explosion and it's taken them this long for his followers to admit it."

Leia sighs, rubbing at her eyes. "That's two of the five families dead in a matter of months. And us without any grounds to make any official arrests. This is falling apart faster than I'd hoped."

"Sorry," Finn interrupts. "But I don't see the problem here. Isn't it a good thing if we let them wipe each other out? Less work for us, right?"

"Yeah," Poe agrees. "What he said."

"Except they're not wiping each other out," Ben corrects. "They're consolidating power. Once they agree on a single leader to unify behind, it'll be impossible to stop them without starting another war. We have to dismantle them while they're still fighting amongst themselves."

"I need to make some calls," Leia says, turning to wheel out of the room. "And tomorrow, I'll have to propose a plan to the Council. I want you all to join me at that meeting tomorrow."

Rey blinks, taken aback. Leia has never invited her to join one of her political meetings before. And Ben's presence would be sure to ruffle some feathers. For obvious reasons. "You want all of us?"

Leia raises an eyebrow. "Unless you have better things to do?"

"Er, no." Rey says, heat rising to her cheeks. "Of course not."

"What bout Virya?" Leia turns in the doorframe, directing her question at Ben.

"What about her?"

"She knows the Inner Circle. She probably has the best guess at which of the three will be the next to seize power. I'd like to have her perspective in the meeting, if you think we can trust her."

Ben shakes his head. "No. I'll question her directly. But I wouldn't bring her into a Council meeting. Her current situation notwithstanding, at the end of the day she's still a Vorian."

Leia purses her lips, not liking Ben's answer, but she nods and rolls out the door. Once it closes, Poe speaks up from his corner.

"That was a little harsh, wasn't it? We're giving _you _a second chance based on good behavior."

Ben's glances across the room. "Your point, Dameron?"

"My point is that Virya has been pretty loyal to you, even though we've only treated her like a glorified prisoner. And Leia's right. We could use her help."

Ben shakes his head, already leaving the room. "The man she's so loyal to doesn't exist anymore."

#

That night, Rey hopes for the power to go out. She wants to see Ben. She wants to ask him a dozen questions. Like if he'd knowingly been coaching her and Finn toward Force sharing. And if so, why hadn't he just down it with her himself? And if he thinks Poe's right. Are they being too harsh toward Virya and putting themselves at a disadvantage for it? Is Ben only pushing Virya away for Rey's sake?

She waits until midnight, then decides she isn't waiting anymore. For the first time, Rey kicks off her sheets and finds herself in front of Ben's door with the power still on. Her skin is it's normal shade of milky fair, not bathed in the glow of emergency light red. The gentle current of heat blows from the vents in the wall. Still, Rey knocks, expecting his door to slide open immediately.

It doesn't.

"Ben?"

She wonders if he can even hear her through the solid steel door. She knocks again. No response.

_Maybe he's in the shower, _she thinks. _Maybe he's actually asleep for once._ After all, this is much earlier than her usual night visits. And he wouldn't be expecting her with the power still on.

Rey starts back toward her room, but stops at the thought of waiting any longer. Just the idea of it drives her up a wall. So instead she turns, gives one more knock, and then presses her thumb onto the lock pad. The door flashes green and sighs open, rolling an inch from its frame.

_If he's in the shower,_ _I'll just wait for him to finish._ _And if he's actually asleep, I'll…_

Rey doesn't finish that thought because Ben's room is empty. The bed is made and the desk chair is unoccupied. The door to the bathroom sits open, no lights or the sounds of running water from within. Rey hesitates, taken aback. The door rolls shut behind her.

Rey stands in Ben's room, wondering where he could be, trying to silence her worst fears stirring in the back of her mind. The ones that tell her it's finally happened. She's come to find him and he is simply gone. Vanished again. She reaches for their bond and scrapes along its jagged edge. She swallows the familiar pain along with her frustration.

_Alright. Calm down. He's just gone somewhere for now. The mess hall or the medical wing. He'll be back_. _He'll be back soon. _Rey recognizes these instincts from her childhood, a mental safety blanket so well used it's frayed along its edges. But still, she clings to it. _He's still on the ship somewhere. He'll be back. And if you leave to look, you might not be here when he does. It would be better if you waited. If you stayed right here. _

Rey walks over to the desk chair, the place where he always is. It is an exact replica of the one in her own room, but somehow she feels closer to him when she sits in it, occupying the same space where he spends so much time. Thinking instead of sleeping. Waiting for her breath to slow in sleep.

Her gaze wanders from the bed to the books, piles of research on dyads and the Force. It occurs to her that she's never looked through any of them. She's left that mostly to Ben, despite the fact that it's her life on the line. Despite the fact that she also wants their bond repaired. She takes the volume closest to her, opening to a dog-eared section with a bookmark of paper scrap. Ben's handwriting is all over the pages, underlining paragraphs and circling relevant passages, making little notations in the margins.

"Forging a dyad requires two willing subjects with perfectly matched desire," she reads aloud, following the marks of Ben's pen. "If one party holds a lesser desire than his or her counterpart to be joined, the two may never be one. For this reason, almost all attempts to create a dyad have been unsuccessful. Most dyads occur naturally, created by the Force itself. A list of known dyads include…"

Rey trails as the passage digresses into a list of historical dyads. It is surprisingly short and offers no color beyond a set of names. She flips more pages until she finds the next section marked by Ben's hand.

"A dyad is the purest bond within the Force. As such, they embody all of its aspects. Their primary function is to serve as an agent of the Force's highest ideal… balance."

Rey pauses, not because the word strikes her particularly but because it had clearly meant something to Ben. That single word, _balance,_ is underscored twice with heavy, jagged lines. As if that weren't enough, he'd also gone back and circled it in a wide loop, giving the impression of a snare. Rey runs her finger over Ben's pen markings. He'd pressed hard enough to nearly break through the page.

"Through balance the dyad is created. And balance the dyad shall restore. We must pity-" Rey falters, frowning as she takes in the following line. "… pity the two that are one, or perhaps better called the one divided in two, fated to share only in the dyad's incredible weight. For all others, they are the heralds of balance. Yet their own existence is unrivaled both in power and in sorrow."


	25. Any Price

_**A/N:**__ I hope you are all safe, in every sense of the word. 2020 needs to get it together. _ _-_ _Please excsue the huge chunks of expository monologue floating around in this chapter. If I were a better writer, my characters would shut up more. _

#

Rey strides through the halls of base ship, leaving a wake of flickering lights behind her. The Force tampers with electrical fields as she passes through them, its power the lightening in the storm of her emotions. She does her best to seal the chaos, focusing on her destination and the book still clutched in her hand.

_Their own existence is unrivaled both in power and in sorrow. _

There are only two people on the ship who might explain that passage to her. One has gone missing from his rooms. The other, Rey has never gone to this late but she has nowhere else to turn. When she reaches Leia's door, she presses her thumb to the lock. It clicks open and she crosses the foyer, angling straight for the General's personal quarters. Then, finally, something stops her.

The door to Leia's office is ajar. Spilling through it is a thin slice of lamplight and the sound of raised voices. One of them is Ben's.

Rey's mind briefly blanks, giving way to a single, overriding thought._ Still here. Still with me._

She's reaches for the door, then freezes once she starts to register the words.

"- telling you. I've read them again and again, both Jedi and Sith texts. I keep looking for a different answer but they all point to the same thing. There is no other solution."

"Ben, please. Give it a little more time. Maybe we can-"

"She doesn't _have_ any more time!" Ben's voice is a snarl. "You weren't with her at the auction. You didn't see what it was like."

"She still survived," Leia counters. "She was strong enough to pull through."

"Only with help. If Finn had been rejected by the water, if he hadn't been connected to the Force, I… we would have lost her. Again."

"So let Finn keep helping her. If he can be a solution - "

"He's a bandaid on a mortal wound. Even if he fully embraces the Light, he'll never be strong enough to temper her. Until the dyad is repaired, she'll never be truly safe." Ben starts moving. His footfalls come toward the door and, unwittingly, toward Rey.

"Ben, wait. Please -"

"I'm sorry, mother. My decision is made. I just came here to tell you so you'd understand."

"This isn't what Rey would want. You know she wouldn't-"

The door swings open, throwing light onto Rey's face.

Ben halts, filling the doorframe. Backlit, his features are dim. But she can see his surprise in the way he goes perfectly still.

"Well?" Rey stands in his path, looking straight into the shadows of his eyes. "What exactly wouldn't I want?"

#

Leia leaves them in her office, saying the two of them should talk. As she rolls past, the General sends Rey a glance that coils low in her stomach. She's never seen Leia plead.

Then the door closes and they are alone.

"How much did you hear?" Ben's voice is so much milder than it had been with Leia. Rey wonders how often he does that, shelters Rey from his darkness and lets it slip out to others instead. Just how much has he been keeping from her? She realizes with strange detachment that they are standing on the verge of something they won't be able to go back from. She also realizes that at some point between his bedroom and Leia's door, she's already decided she'd rather go through with this than keep waiting. Keep hoping that one day he'll answer her questions before they chew her up from the inside.

"I heard enough," she answers.

"How did you know where I'd be?"

"Actually, I was looking for Leia."

"Oh. I see."

"I went to your room. You weren't there."

Ben frowns. "But the power didn't-"

"I don't come over because I'm scared of the dark, Ben. You know I don't."

Ben's jaw flexes. His silence only strengthens Rey's resolve. If she has to drag him out into honestly, so be it.

"I come because I want to be with you."

Emotion ripples his expression. He tries to control it, looking away from her. Still, he says very quietly, "I know."

Rey extends the book toward him, her fingers still sandwiched in the passages she'd read at his desk. Those words lurk in the dark, papery crevices, as if they might bite her. "How long were you going to hide this from me?"

"I wasn't hiding it. You knew what I was doing."

"You told me you hadn't found anything."

"I told you I'd only found things I didn't want to hear."

"Things like this?" Rey lets the book fall open to the passage. Ben looks at the text as if he wants it burned.

"Of course," he exhales bitterly. "Of all the places you could've happened to look, of course you'd start there."

"What does it mean? I know it's important if you came to Leia."

Ben says nothing. Rey can practically feel his walls going up.

"I've already seen it, Ben. You can't undo that. I might not understand it yet but give me time and I will. So either you can just tell me now or I can go figure it out on my own and be even angrier with you for not helping me. If that's even physically possible. Being angrier with you."

"Rey, it would be easier if you just let me-"

"I don't want easier," Rey snaps. "I want _answers._ I can take it, alright? I promise I can take whatever it is you're hiding. But what I can't take anymore of is… _this!_" She gestures to the space between them, a few steps and a mountain of secrets.

A violet needle of Force lightening skitters between them, leaping from Rey's fingers and dying before it can pierce Ben's. They both go rigid. Fear spikes Rey's anger, like gasoline on red coals. She expects Ben to step back from her. Instead he comes closer.

"Did you do that on purpose? Are you -"

"Of course not," Rey draws away from him. "I'm unbalanced, remember? I will be until we fix the dyad. Only we can't because you won't tell me how." Her voice is rising, face flushing, but she's past the point of trying to collect herself. "Or maybe because you just don't want to."

Ben looks sharply at her, a flash of real anger in his eyes. He stops reaching for her hands and goes still where he is. "I'm trying to protect you, Rey. The least you can do is try to understand that about me."

"Well, I don't want your protection. I want you to tell me what's going on."

Ben's face goes stony. He turns and, to her brief shock, he starts for the door. "No. You don't deserve this."

Rey goes right after him, keeping some distance in case the Force tries to flay him again. "Running away again? Just like you ran from me in Exegol? Let me believe you were _dead?_"

She sees the tension winding up his back as he walks away from her. His hands clench into fists, even as he reaches for the door.

"Is it the pain this book talks about?" Rey demands. "This great pain of being a dyad? Is that what you're afraid of? Why you keep pulling away from me in the Force? Why you don't want to be with me?"

She says those words aloud, _'You don't want to be with me', _and Ben completely loses it.

He whirls, suddenly in her face. The hand that had started opening the door throws it shut again, slamming so hard that Rey feels it in her chest.

"_Don't want to be with you? _Rey. My whole life, you were the _only_ one I-" Ben bites his words off, catching himself. With visible effort, he dampens his fury down into seething. "You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what it was like to find you in Exegol. To claw my way out of that pit, to make it back to you only to find you crumpled and cold and…" he stops, drawing a shaky breath. "You want the truth? Fine. The truth is I want to be with you. I've wanted it since the moment I saw you, since before I even knew you, more than I've ever fucking wanted anything! And _that _is the dyad's pain, Rey. Because you and I don't get to have the only thing we want."

At some point, Rey has stopped thinking. Stopped breathing. She can only stand there as Ben shouts things that make her feel full and empty all at once. She opens her mouth to ask what he's talking about, but the words won't even come.

Ben sees the shock on her face. He deflates as suddenly as he'd blown up. He runs a hand through his black hair and leans back against the door. His walls are all crumbled now. Behind them, he is just as much a mess as she is.

"And the truth is, I already knew what those texts would tell me. I just didn't want to admit it to myself. But I saw it in Exegol when I saved your life. The Force showed it to me. And if that's what it takes to save you, so be it. I'll pay any price."

"What price?" Rey's voice is hollow and hoarse from shouting. "What did the Force show you?"

"That you and I can't be together. No dyad can. The two that are one must fall on opposite sides of the Force. Only then does it achieve balance. If you go to the Light, I must go the Dark. And the other way around. No matter how hard we fight it, that will always be our fate. That's the suffering of the dyad."

"But… that doesn't make any… no. Just, no." Rey shakes her head. "We're a dyad. Two that are _one_. It only makes sense for us to be together."

"I thought so too in the beginning. But when I saved your life in Exegol, the Force showed itself to me. Our powers are too great, there's no one else that could match us. If we come together, in Light or Dark, the Force becomes unbalanced. It will start working against us."

"You're wrong," Rey says, because he must be.

"I wish I was," Ben says. "Think about it Rey. Leia and Han were my parents. Luke Skywalker was my uncle and Master. I was born into the Light. And you were born a Palpatine, daughter of the Dark. But when your parents left you on Jakku, they changed your course. You were five. And I was fifteen. It was on my fifteenth birthday that Leia started talking to Luke about sending me away. She could feel the darkness starting inside me. Within a year, I was hearing Snoke's voice inside my head. We were trading sides, balancing each other out before we even knew what we were doing."

"That's… just a coincidence," Rey shakes her head. "It doesn't mean-"

"When Snoke died and I became Supreme Leader, Luke perished and you became the Last Jedi. Then when you started feeling a pull toward the Darkness and seeing visions of yourself as the Empress, the Force sent me visions of Han to guide me back to the Light. And when we both stood against Palpatine? When I finally decided to defy everything and stand alongside you? The Force refused to allow it. It took you from me. Wiped you out of existence. Don't you see, Rey? Our whole lives we've danced between the Light and Dark, but we can never be on same side at once. Powerful Darkness must be met by powerful Light. And vice versa. That's you and me. That's the purpose of a dyad."

"And that's why… you broke it off?" Rey says, dazed.

Ben shakes his head. "At the time, I was only trying to save you. But once I saw what the Force held for us, yes. I left. I knew that if we stayed together, sooner or later the dyad might be reforged. And then the whole game would start again. A war between Light and Dark, with us as the centerpiece. You didn't deserve that burden."

_You didn't deserve it_, Ben's words echo in her head, their true meaning now clear to her. He hadn't been condemning her. He hadn't been telling her that she wasn't deserving. He'd meant that she deserved better. He'd been trying to sheild her from a painful truth, to carry it for her without her ever knowing.

_Oh, Ben. You stupid, beautiful, man._

"You should have told me," Rey said. "You shouldn't have just let me believe you were dead."

"If you'd known I was alive, you'd have searched for me. Just as I once searched for you. And if you'd found me, you'd have tried to save me. Turn me back to the Light. And your trying would have destroyed us both. If you'd succeeded in turning me, you yourself would have fallen to the Dark."

Rey shakes her head. "But you already turned. You chose the Light on your own. You came to Exegol to defeat Palpatine. The Force failed to keep you on the Dark Side-"

"I came to Exegol for you, Rey. Nothing else. I don't care about the legends anymore. Not destroying them, not becoming them. The conflict between Jedi and Sith turned me into a blight once. And now it's trying to do the same to you. First you were a Palpatine, and breaking that cycle killed you. Now you're a Skywalker. Don't you see? It turns us into legends only to break us on the rocks of the ideals we became. In the end, nothing's even left of the people we were before. I thought if I broke the dyad, I could save you from that fate. I didn't realize I was condemning you to a different kind of death. To save you from that, the dyad must be reforged."

"Maybe," Rey says, shaking her head to try and clear her thoughts. "If I can find a way to control it, we could both be in the Light. If I could-"

"I thought Force sharing might be enough to help you control it. But it wasn't." Ben gestures to her hand, where just moments ago lightening had darted from her fingertips. "Finn was my last hope. But he took some of the Force from you today, and you're already like this. Only the dyad can save you. I see that now."

"But we don't know how to repair the bond."

"We do," Ben says. "You were right about one thing. My fear… my hope that I might find another way to make this all work. That's been what's keeping us apart. My desire wasn't equal to yours." Ben reaches out, cupping Rey's face. His hand engulfs her neck and jawline. His thumb brushes along her lower lashes. Wet, she realizes. At some point, she's started crying. "I put you in danger, Rey. I'm sorry. But now that I know there's no other way, I can do this for you."

Rey feels a whisper along the edges of their bond. A brush of contact, gentle as his hand on her cheek. She jerks, taking his wrist in her hands and pulling it from her face. "What are you doing?"

"Finding you in the Force," Ben says. "Reforging the dyad."

"So you can leave again." Rey grips his wrist.

"So I can save you."

"But you will leave me," Rey says. "If you're right about the dyad, once it's repaired we won't be able to be together. That's what you came here to tell Leia, isn't it? That you were going to reforge our bond, even if it meant relinquishing yourself to the Dark Side."

Ben's silence confirms her question.

Rey firmly guides his hand back down to his side. "Then I don't want to be reforged."

Ben frowns, straightening from the door. "This is the only way to save you."

"I don't care. I'll find another way. The dyad needs two equal desires to reforged, right? Well, you might have changed your mind about it, but now so have I. And as long as I don't want to, you don't get to decide all on your own."

"Rey," Ben says sharply. "This isn't a joke. I'm not going to just let you die. It's better for it to be this way than for you to -"

Ben doesn't get to finish that sentence. Because Rey pushes him back against the door. She takes his face in her hands, going up onto her toes. She barely registers the shock on his face before she covers his mouth with hers.

The kiss only lasts a few moments. Ben's lips are warm and soft. He smells like seared metal dipped inside the sea. Apart from than that, their second kiss is nothing like their first. Rey pushes Ben hard up against the door. She feels the line of his body along her chest, a press of teeth behind the softness of his mouth. Ben inhales sharply, his hands finding her waist as if against his will, torn behind pulling her close and holding her back. When Rey breaks away from him, she is glaring, telling him that she damn well means it.

"I said, I don't care," she breathes, her mouth a little swollen. "I'm not letting you go again. Not for any price."

_**A/N:**__ I touched you once, I touched you twice. I won't let go at any price. _ _Check out my twitter for previews of upcoming chapters, starting next Monday (6/8th). Nanirain1_


	26. So That's How It's Gonna Be?

Rey wakes to the sound of muffled banging. Someone calling her name.

"Rey!" _Bang. Bang. Bang._ "You in there?" _Bang. Bang._ "Come on, get up. We're late for Leia's council meeting."

Rey sits bolt upright. _Oh, kriff. _

She scrambles for the bed's edge, only to trip over a pair of long legs beside her.

"Ow! What the - _Ben!_" She fumbles for his alarm clock, kicking sheets off her ankles. "Why didn't you wake me!"

Ben sits on top of the bedding, fully dressed and ignoring the commotion entirely. Ignoring Rey. He licks his thumb and turns a page of the book in his lap. He is scowling faintly. It's the same scowl from last night, etched on his brow after hours of circular arguments around which of them was being an idiot and who wasn't going to accept what.

Rey puts her hands on her hips. "Oh, so that's how it's going to be? The silent treatment, yeah? Mature, Solo. Very mature. Just because I won't let you sacrifice yourself for -"

_Bang. Bang. Bang._ "Rey!"

"Yes, alright!" She shouts, whirling to hiss at quick "Stay here," at Ben before striding to the door.

She smooths the rumpled clothes she'd slept in and throws the door open, stepping into the hall. Belatedly, she wonders how she will explain bursting out of Ben's room instead of her own.

Poe stands the next apartment down, hammering on Rey's door.

"Hey, man." Poe spares half a glance over his shoulder. "Listen, can you help me get into Rey's-"

Poe freezes, fist still raised. Slowly, he turns back.

"Um," Rey starts. Brilliant.

Poe looks back and forth between the door she's standing in and the one he's hammering on. His pointer finger flicks out from his raised fist. "This is still your room, right?"

"This isn't what it looks like. I was just-"

"Morning, Dameron."

Rey goes rigid. She turns to see Ben behind her, arms crossed, leaning casually against the door frame. He nods at Poe.

Rey and Poe both stare for a stunned moment.

Poe recovers first. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

"Poe, wait-"

"You," Poe swings his pointing finger to Rey, "are _so lucky_ Leia sent me to get you instead of Finn. You realize that? Because if Finn found out like this -"

"I said it's not what it looks like!"

"Oh, yeah. Uh huh. Sure," Poe's accusing finger sweeps from Rey to Ben. "Where did she sleep last night?"

"With me."

_"Ben!" _

"_So lucky!_" Poe shouts, pointing back to Rey. "Now, one of you take a shower and then both of you get your asses down to the Council room. Like, immediately."

"What? Why does one of us have to shower before-"

"Because if you both show up late, _both _freshly showered, it's not going to take a genius to put two and two together!" Poe snaps.

Before Rey can explain anything, the pilot spins on his heel and storms off muttering down the hall. "Unbelievable. Un-_fucking_-believable…"

Rey turns accusingly to Ben. "What the hell was that? I told you to stay in the room."

Ben throws a towel in her face.

#

"I know what you're doing," Rey says, raking her damp hair into buns as she and Ben stride to the Council room. "And it won't work. You can't just annoy me into changing my mind."

Ben says nothing beside her.

"So you can drop the sulking bit already." Rey keys in the access code and presses her thumb to the pad. "It's childish."

Ben finally looks at her, slanting a dry look her way. "This coming from the one who refused to go to sleep last night."

"Convince me you won't try to reforge the dyad and leave in the middle of the night. Then we can talk about you getting your privacy back."

And just like that, they're circling the same black hole of an argument they'd spent most of last night on. The door unlocks but neither of them notice.

"And just how am I supposed to do that when you refuse to cooperate?" Ben grates.

"I don't know," Rey crosses her arms. "But until I catch up on all the research you've already done, I don't know for sure that you can't. And if you think I'm taking my eyes off you in the meantime, you're dreaming."

"It takes two equal desires to forge a dyad, Rey._ Equal. _I have to convince you to want to save your own damn life before I can-"

"I told you, we're not forging anything if it means you might have to turn. So why don't you stop being petulant and help me find another way."

"_I'm_ the one being petulant," Ben repeats heavily. "_Me_."

"Yes, you_._ Giving Poe the wrong idea when he came over? That was nice."

"You're the one who went flying out the door. You gave him the ideas. I just answered an honest question."

"But we didn't-"

"You slept right next to me," Ben leans in, locking her in his eyes, which are suddenly intense and full with a different kind of frustration. "The whole night."

The pitch of his voice and the look in his eyes thrum up Rey's spine. A memory of their kiss winds in her like a loaded spring. Ben's lips and smell and the press of his chest against hers. Rey blinks, refusing to shudder because Ben is fixated on her, drinking in every inch of her. For a crazy second, she thinks he even -

"Because you're neurotic," Ben says instead, straightening.

And just like that, the moment ends. They share a instant of intense, mutual connection and then snap right back into arguing. Just like they had last night after Rey had kissed him. She can't tell if it's a relief or a disappointment. But she can finally exhale again.

"Whatever," she snaps. "You also let me oversleep when you knew we had to be at Leia's-"

"Let you? Rey, if you've made one thing clear it's that I have no say whatsoever in what you do. Maybe if you hadn't forced yourself to stay up all night, watching me like a prison guard, you wouldn't have collapsed at five in the morning."

"Can you blame me? After all your bullshit talk of submitting to our fate and-"

"There you are!" Someone seizes Rey by the arm and literally yanks her from the conversation, pulling her through the threshold. Rey blinks, face to face with Finn. Ben steps inside and shuts the door behind them. Finn doesn't greet Ben directly, but he doesn't make any barbed commentary either. Rey takes that as progress.

"Where have you been?" Finn demands. "Leia has been holding off the Council for — wait, is your hair wet? Did you _shower_?"

"She needed it."

Finn blinks, waiting on Ben for further explanation.

Rey shoots a death glare over her shoulder. _Don't. You. Dare._

"Okay…" Finn's eyes narrow slightly. "Well, next time you're running late to an intergalactic government meeting, maybe skip the beauty routine?"

"Right," Rey says, pulling from Finn's grip. "Sorry."

"Now remember, once we're inside Leia does the talking. She's the Senator. We're Associates. We don't participate unless she asks us to directly."

"Okay."

"Also, no one knows you two are the ones spying for Leia. So if she does ask you to weigh in, try not to say anything that will give yourselves away to the whole Senate. Got it?"

Rey glances at Ben, who nods.

"Yeah. We got it."

#

The Council room is a giant round table in the middle of an otherwise sparse room. Nearly every seat is filled with live-streamed projections of two dozen Senators, virtually gathered from every corner of the galaxy. The only solid people are Leia, sitting in her hover chair and dressed in a crisp suit, and Poe who sits to her left.

Rey makes brief eye contact with Poe as they enter. He holds her gaze a second longer than natural until Finn takes the empty seat to Poe's left. Leia gestures Rey and Ben to take the two chairs on her right. Rey sits, forcing herself to look straight ahead when what she really wants to do is search Leia's face. Had Poe told the General how he'd found her son and protege this morning?

"Can we assume that these the last of your associates?" A holograph asks from across the table. Even through the ghoulish haze of the projection, the man's eyes are vividly green. Rey bristles at the tone taken toward Leia, but her mentor takes it in stride.

"Yes," Leia answers. "Again, I apologize for their tardiness."

"Apologize by telling us why we're here, Organa," a female Twi'lek says. "It isn't easy to convene the entire Senate on such late notice. Lets be respectful of everyone's time."

"Of course, Senator Kiran. I convened this meeting because last night we received news that Rosshel is dead."

The room shifts perceptibly. Someone mutters a swear. Companions exchange significant looks under ridged brows.

"That leaves us with three families in the Inner Circle," says the Twi'lek female, Senator Kiran. "And likely very little time before we have a new Supreme Leader."

"We must take action," another Senator says. "I presume we wouldn't have been called here if Senator Leia didn't already have a plan?"

"Obviously, this is all happening faster than we'd hoped," Leia acknowledges. "But after giving it considerable thought, I'd propose we continue with our current course of infiltration and legal arrest. I know there are some who will disagree with me."

Across the table, Green Eyes scowls. "That plan is clearly insufficient."

"Our agents have only had one interaction, Marcus. We simply haven't given them enough time to find solid proof of a crime."

"Your agents literally had a theater box collapse on top of them. They were with Rosshel when he was attacked yet they still don't know who was behind it. You'll forgive me my doubts, Leia."

Rey's jaw tightens at the criticism. Scathing as it is, Green Eyes has a point. Unconsciously, Rey glances at Ben. He stares ahead with a soldier's neutrality, but beneath the table, his knee bumps against hers and presses. Rey presses back, using the contact as an outlet for her irritation. Ben meets her steady pressure.

"And while you're waiting for them to bring back something useful," Green Eyes continues, "the First Order is literally rebuilding beneath our noses. We can't stand by any longer. We must act."

"And what would you have us act on, Senator Marcus?" Leia asks. "When we drafted the New Republic, we agreed to only use force when we have _proof_ of a crime."

"The bodies of Vorian and Rosshel aren't proof enough for you? Murders are being committed, Leia."

"Yes, but we still don't know by whom. We cannot just storm into homes and start making arrests without any proof."

"Perhaps we arrest all three of the remaining families," another Senator suggests. "See if the killing stops once they're all behind bars."

Senator Marcus nods. "Agreed. Arrest now and find a reason once they're in jail."

"Senator Marcus," Leia says, "right now every eye in the universe is watching our New Republic. If we start arresting whoever we want simply because they might be an enemy, we tell everyone that we're no better than the First Order. I have faith in my informants. I believe they are close to uncovering whoever is behind the murders. So unless someone comes up with a legitimate alternative, I see no other choice than than to proceed with our original-"

"As it so happens, I do have an alternative," Marcus interrupts.

Leia stares at him for a tense moment, then tilts her head. "Yes?"

"I have recently entered into an arrangement with an informant of my own. He has told me the location of a fleet of warships Rosshel had been building for the Inner Circle. I motion that we take a bomb squad to destroy them before they can ever be put to use."

"Rosshel Inc. is in the shipbuilding and tech industry," Senator Kiran points out. "How do you know he wasn't just filling orders as usual?"

"I don't," Marcus replies. "And I don't need to. If Organa won't permit an arrest, the very least we should do is cripple the enemy's firepower. When the Inner Circle comes for war, which they _will_, at least we'll have that to our advantage."

"But if you're wrong," Kiran persists. "You'll be destroying billions of corporate property without legal standing."

Marcus shrugs. "Then we play it off as an accident. No one ever needs to know that we were behind it."

"You suggest lying to the people," Leia said.

"I suggest taking at least _some _precautions to keep our people safe. Morever, Senator Leia, you're sending spies into Inner Circle social events. I don't think you have any grounds to criticize me for subterfuge."

"I motion we pursue both plans," Kiran says. "Senator Leia's informants continue their work. If they can prove grounds for an arrest, we act immediately. Until they do, Senator Marcus has permission to pursue the destruction of Rosshel's fleet. However, if Marcus is discovered and _if _he cannot prove the fleet was intended for the purposes of war, it will be up to him to reach a personal settlement with Rosshel Inc. Is that an acceptable compromise?"

Rey can tell from the tension in Leia's face that she doesn't want to agree. But with the rest of the Senate staring her down, this hill might not be the one to die upon. "If that's what the Senate wants," Leia relents, "I won't stand against it. However, Senator Marcus, I would like some more details on your lead. Where exactly is this supposed fleet?"

"According to my source, it's being build in the X-16 solar system."

Rey frowns. X-16. She'd heard of that system recently. But where…

"That's a cold system," another Senator says. "Its sun died a millennium ago. There's nothing there now but cold dust."

"A perfect place to build a secret army, no?" Marcus points out.

"And this informant," Leia presses. "Would you mind sharing his name?"

"Gladly," Marcus sits back. "I have nothing to hide. So long as we all agree it will never leave this room."

"Of course."

The rest of the Senate nods in agreement.

"He's an information trader well connected to the Inner Circle. Recently, he realized that he was playing for the losing side and approached me to strike up a new deal."

"A name, Marcus, if you please."

"His name is Bindu."

Rey jolts. Bindu. The man who had pulled her aside at Rosshel's auction, believing she was Virya Vorian. The man who had tried to sell her information that Doran Vorian had agreed to purchase just before he'd died. The man she'd arranged to meet at the Frost Ball to discuss the transaction. The memory of their conversation snaps together at once.

_I have information regarding certain activities in the X-16 solar system… The kind that would be of great interest to any of the families in the Inner Circle… a meaningful advantage to have in your back pocket._

"Wait," Rey blurts, interrupting the Senator mid-stream.

The whole room turns to her in surprise. Across Poe and Leia, Finn leans out to make wide, warning eyes at her.

"I know him," Rey turns, addressing Leia instead of the Senate. "He offered… Virya information about the X-16 Solar System. He said he was contracted with her father up until his death."

Leia frowns. "What was the information did he have?"

Rey shakes her head. "He wasn't offering it for free, but it was about the X-16 system. At the Frost Ball, he's supposed to-"

"Excuse me, Organa, who is this child you're allowing to steamroll our meeting?"

Rey turns to meet the sharp green eyes of Senator Marcus.

"Apologies," Marcus says, quite un-apologetically. "But did I miss your election to a member of this Senate?"

"Senator Marcus-"

"No, Kiran, this is unacceptable. First, this girl keeps us all waiting. Now she interrupts us with some far fetched story about-"

"This _girl_," Finn leans across the table, decorum forgotten, "is none other than Rey Skywalker. You might want to show her some respect for saving the whole galaxy."

At the name _Skywalker, _Rey flicks her gaze toward Ben.

To a stranger, Ben's expression would seem perfectly neutral. But Rey knows him well enough to see how hard his gaze is fixed on Senator Marcus, like a missile locking system. His knee, still pressed to hers under the table, is a slab of stone. He's so focused on the green eyed Senator, he doesn't seem to notice Finn's public flaunting of Rey's adopted surname.

_First you were a Palpatine… Now you're a Skywalker. Don't you see? … In the end, nothing's even left of the people we were before._

Rey swallows the memory of Ben's words, returning her attention to the affronted Senator. "I apologize for speaking out of turn. I'm simply asking that the Senate tread carefully around Bindu. I know he's making similar offers to the Inner Circle as well."

"As I said, it's his job to deal in information," Marcus says impatiently. "Of course he won't be loyal to either side. All that matters is his information is good."

"But how can you trust that it is without knowing you have his loyalty?" Leia asks. "He could very well be lying to you."

Marcus blinks. "Leia. You can't be taking this child's side over-"

"I am," Leia says calmly. "I _can_, Marcus, because I have faith in both Rey's abilities and her loyalty."

A bit of unexpected warmth blossoms in Rey's chest.

Senator Marcus looks to Senator Kiran, disbelief all over his face.

But Kiran is focused on Rey and Ben, watching them with her bright, intelligent eyes. "How do you know this for certain, Rey Skywalker?"

Again, Rey feels the weight of an entire Senate landing squarely on her. The warmth in her chest promptly dies. She holds the Twi'lek's gaze, cutting down every emotion before they can reach her face. "I just know it. That's all I can say."

After a moment, Kiran smiles kindly. "Well, if you have Leia's trust, you also have mine. I propose a revised compromise. Senator Marcus proceeds with his mission in X-16. But not with a bomb squad. Assemble our best stealth team and observe before you strike. If you find yourself lured into a trap, you can escape without anyone ever knowing you were there. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes," Senator Marcus says a bit tightly. "Fine."

Kran nods. "And Leia, your agents have the Senate's support to proceed with their mission. But under the condition that they arrange a meeting with Bindu tomorrow. The Senate will provide the funds to purchase his information. Let's see if this informant will sing the same tune to both sides."


	27. Take Me Out

The next evening, Virya Vorian and her Mystery Man are shown to a booth on a private terrace of an exclusive, seaside restaurant. She wears a breezy, off-the-shoulder summer dress. He wears an all black long sleeve, long pants, and combat boots, despite the balmy weather. He is also blatantly carrying a blaster, which is strictly against restaurant rules, but nobody says a word. His upper face is covered by a half-mask, obscuring all features but his mouth and jaw. Even so, the maitre d' can _feel_ his irritation when she leads them to the Vorian's private table.

"Is the usual table not to his liking?" the woman squeaks.

"No," Virya assures. "He's fine. This is fine. Thank you."

The maitre d' flees the radius of Mystery Man's obvious displeasure, closing the terrace door — a massive slab of glass and iron — behind her.

Once she's gone, Rey glances at Ben. "Is there a problem?"

"It's a circular booth," he says ominously.

Rey glances at the table, a solid slab of marble cut into a half circle. A plush booth hugs the table's curve, and an ornate balcony hugs the back of the booth.

"So? What's wrong with it?"

"It's impossible to secure."

"It's what?"

"If you sit on the end, you're exposed to the door. If you sit in the middle, you can't get out quickly if you need to. If I were trying to put us at a tactical disadvantage, I'd seat us here."

_Oh by the Force, Ben -_ Rey swallows what she wants to say, instead squeezing out an, "…It's fine."

"It's not."

"_You're_ not."

"I'll tell them to move us to-"

"To what? Somewhere different than '_the usual'?_ This is clearly their nicest table. Reserved for Vorians only. You think asking them to move us won't be a bit odd?"

Ben's silence is grim and stubborn, just like him.

Rey sighs. "Right. Look, I understand you're taking this very seriously but-" movement catches the corner of her eye. A waiter with an ice bucket is opening the door. Rey touches a hand to Ben's arm and smiles. She lays Virya's posh accent on as thickly as she can manage. "But we've discussed letting your paranoia get the best of you… remember, _honey?_"

Ben's jaw flexes.

"Why don't you sit in the middle?" Rey gestures for him to slide in first.

"If an armed person comes through the door-"

"Then you'll just flip the table and use it as a shield or something." Rey says, though she knows the table is a joined piece of stone, carved straight out of the floor. "You're a big, strong man. You'll think of something."

Ben looks like he has a thing or two to say about that. But with the waiter setting up the ice bucket, he doesn't have much choice. Instead he sets his jaw and lays a wide palm on Rey's waist. She twitches. She'd forgotten this dress was backless. _Because fashion,_ the Spinster had said. As if that explained anything.

"You first," he says, sliding his holster around his waist so that his blaster is on the hip facing the entrance. "I'll handle the door."

"You're so insane," Rey mutters, low enough that only he can hear. Still, she slides into the booth all the same.

#

Rey spends five minutes with the menu, searching for something she can pronounce. As it turns out, she needn't have bothered. The next time the terrace door opens, a small task force of waitstaff sweep onto the veranda and lay out a spread that looks more like art than food. Charred octopus on a bed of cilantro, onions, and capers; brightly colored fish tartar arranged in a gradient of color, from purple-red to cream-yellow; clay pots of ginger scallion chicken; more vegetables than she has names for; and several abalone sea shells brimming with velvety caviar. Apparently, this is Virya's usual.

"Your companion has called to inform that he is running behind," the head waiter says as his crew sets out the meal. "He asks that you please start without him and says that he'll be here presently."

Beside her, Rey feels Ben go taught like a wire ready to snap. Their waiter feels it too, leaning slightly away from the table. Rey says a dismissive thank you and the waitstaff flee, sketching hasty bows before retreating back into the restaurant and closing the door behind them.

"It's probably nothing," Rey says, taking a sip of wine.

"It might be something."

"Your brooding is frightening the waitstaff."

"Good. Frightened people usually think twice before trying anything stupid."

The waitstaff _do _seem nervous. But Rey is willing to chalk that up to Ben's radiating bloody murder from his seat. She sighs.

The sunset starts in earnest, turning the sea to a dark wine color. Overhead, ropes of string of lights warm up, bathing their terrace in a soft glow. It's one of the most romantic settings Rey could have ever imagined. If either she or Ben hadn't been so busy awaiting for their mission to arrive, they might have noticed the mood.

Instead, Rey nurses her wine with impatience. Ben sits like some lion in wait, taking notice of every small movement or faint sound. They don't make much progress on the food.

She's thankful at least that his mask is less intense than the one he'd worn to the auction. The real Virya had insisted he wear something more social.

_"It's a dinner, Lord Ren, not a duel. Relaxed men talk more than nervous ones. And you won't make him feel relaxed if you show up in full armor. At least wear something that allows the _pretense _of social eating." _

The Spinster had produced a carbon fiber half-mask, one that concealed Ben's features from the nose up, leaving his mouth and jaw exposed.

Ben wears it grudgingly but, as far as Rey's concerned, it's a great improvement. Of course, she still hates to see him in a mask of any sort. Still wants to tear it away and be able to look at his eyes. But half a mask is better than a full one.

Ten silent minutes drag past. There's no sign of Bindu. Rey sips down her wine and pours another to spare the waitstaff from needing to venture out again. Despite telling Ben off for being paranoid, she starts to grow uneasy herself. _Are _they being set up? Has Bindu has leaked their meeting to the Inner Circle Murderer? Are she and Ben just sitting her like stupid, rich ducks? Rey shifts, wincing when her shoes scrape against the table leg.

"I hate these things," she mutters, glaring at the offending heels, strappy things studded with semi-precious stones. "Why does she subject herself to this?"

Looking over his shoulder, across the high street to a neighboring rooftop, Ben suddenly tenses. He whispers a swear.

Rey turns, ready to meet a threat, but she's halted by the firm press of Ben's mouth against her temple. Then by his arm wrapping around her bare shoulders. He pulls her close, until her side is flush with his and her shoulder is nooked in the hollow of his chest.

_What. The. Force._

Every muscle in Rey's body locks up. Except for the one in her chest, which starts throwing itself against Rey's ribs as if they were prison bars. There's no way Ben doesn't feel it.

"Don't look," Ben murmurs. "But someone's photographing us."

Rey's body jolts back into her control. "Someone's_ what?_" She tries to swivel and look across the balcony. But Ben's mouth presses firmly into her temple again, stopping her.

"What did i just say," he whispers on her skin.

"Sorry," Rey mutters. If her stupid heart would give it a rest she might be able to get a proper thought in.

Ben gives her about a half inch of personal space, but his arm stays firmly around her shoulders, his chest turned towards her like a tree orienting toward the sun. She knows he's actually just shielding her. But to any spectator, they just look like a couple having a mushy conversation.

"It's just a reporter," Ben says. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"Or someone hired by the Inner Circle to spy on you."

"Why would it be a _reporter_?"

"Virya Vorian on a date with her anonymous fiance? There isn't a tabloid in the solar system that wouldn't pay a fortune for those pictures."

Rey tries to wrap her head around the concept and largely fails. "I… just don't understand these people." Rey asks, taking up her wine again to give her hands something to do. "So, what do we do?"

"Play along." Ben gives her shoulders a squeeze that both mimes affection and impresses his command. "If you think you can manage it."

Rey slants him a dry look but Ben doesn't notice. He pretends to be looking at her, but even with his mask on, she can tell that his focus is on the periphery and their unannounced company across the way.

So Rey puts her hand on his jaw and kisses him. A peck really. Her lips land somewhere between his cheek and the corner of his mouth. She thinks she feels his breath hitch, and then the entirety of his attention snapping onto her. She smiles, overly sweet, and fights the brief urge to lift his mask and see what's in his eyes.

"Of course, I can. Honey."

#

When Bindu arrives, fifteen minutes late, he finds Virya encircled in the possessive embrace of her fiance-bodyguard-hit-man. He hesitates before stepping onto the veranda, seemingly to pluck up his courage.

Rey pretends not to notice. In fact, she makes a point of ignoring Bindu until he's standing right in front of them. It seems like a Virya thing to do. At the moment, the woman's cool, acidic attitude is not too far a stretch from what Rey is actually feeling.

"Oh. So I see you've decided to join us."

"My apologies," Bindu says, dipping his head and starting to slide into the opposite side of the booth. "I was delayed. I do hope I'm not interrupting?" He glances meaningfully at Ben's arm draped around her.

"Just putting a good show on your for photographer," Ben says, keeping his arm right where it is. "I take it from your arrival that he's gotten all the shots he needed?"

Bindu freezes half seated, then chuckles nervously and slides the rest of the way in. "So you noticed him, did you?"

"As if anyone could miss a lens that size."

"You'd be surprised."

"He's just lucky I didn't mistake him for a sniper and kill him on the spot."

"Funny you should mention that, because he _is _a man of many talents. Ex-military, in fact. And if he gets the idea that you've started threatening me, he may take an entirely different sort of shot."

Rey blinks at the threat. Not that he made one, but the fumbling nature of it. The slight tremor in his voice. This man is nervous. Along her side, the muscles of Ben's chest tense. But his reply to Bindu is cool. "Lucky then that I don't often threaten."

"No," Bindu sighs, helping himself to the octopus. "I imagine you just _do_. I'd bet you were ex-military yourself. I tried looking into it of course, but you're good at keeping secrets. Which is a great compliment coming from someone like me."

"I have all the relevant experience," Ben says in simple reply.

"That much is clear. If you don't mind me asking, how _did _you know the photographer was mine?"

"I didn't. You just told me."

"Hah," Bindu lets slip an unconvincing laugh. It seems more resigned than entertained. So does the way he plucks food for his plate, like a death row inmate grudgingly taking his last meal. "You know, I think I might almost like you. If you didn't keep putting hoops in the way of my job."

"Keep trying to get close to my fiance, and putting hoops in your way is_ my_ job."

Rey marvels at the ease with which Ben delivers that line. _My fiance. _For someone who wasn't very keen about their improvised engagement, he certainly takes to the guise well enough.

"I hope you understand," Bindu says. "Inside information is my livelihood. Those photographs will keep my pockets flush for the next quarter. If I were to have joined you, they'd have been worthless. Romantic-Dinner-Date sells. Business-Meeting with little, old me? Not so much."

"Don't worry, I understand," Ben says. "If I didn't, I'd have pretended to mistake him for a sniper and thrown my steak knife into his eye."

"And you could make that throw, could you?"

"Should we find out?"

"If you're both quite finished flirting with each other," Rey interrupts, squeezing Ben's hand around her shoulder. "Perhaps we get to business? We've already wasted enough time."

Bindu nods. "Of course. I admit my surprise at receiving your invitation. At the auction, you didn't seem overly compelled."

"Things change."

"Ah, yes. I understand you knew Rosshel from childhood. My condolences if you want them."

"I don't," Rey assures, hastily steering away from Virya's childhood. Bindu probably knew more about the subject than Rey herself. "What I do want is your information about the X-16 System. And I've decided to meet your price."

"Excellent." Bindu says, though less enthusiastically than she'd expected. "But may I ask what's changed your mind?"

"This game keeps getting deadlier," Rey says, choosing a lie that's closest to the truth. "We're just preparing to survive it."

"Wise," Bindu nods. "And of course, I'm still very interested in working with you. But I will need some assurance of payment and my personal safety after what happened with Rosshel."

Rey waits but Bindu doesn't offer any further explanation. He just stares at her, obviously tense.

"After what happened with Rosshel?" she nudges.

"Why. Um. Well, after you… reneged on him."

"After I what?" Rey blinks. "I didn't renege on anyone. He died."

"Well, yes. And there are several… _rumors_," Bindu says, choosing his words very carefully, "that you set off that explosion in order to keep your inheritance."

Rey stares blankly at Bindu, trying to absorb his meaning. "What are you saying? People think that I _murdered _Rosshel instead of paying him?"

"Yes." Bindu looks relieved that she's said it herself instead of forcing him to. "That's it precisely."

"That's ludicrous. Why would I set off an explosion I was standing on front of? I could have died along with him."

"I don't presume to know why you would or wouldn't do something like that," Bindu says quickly, glancing toward the door as he does. "But you did have your, er, fiance with you. He seems like a very capable sort. Perhaps he just bullied the blast into going round you. Hah."

It takes Rey a moment to comprehend Bindu's flat attempt at a joke. If he was trying to dissipate his own nerves, he fails miserably.

"Keep wasting our time," Ben growls, "and you'll find out just how capable I am."

"Hah." Again with that miserable shell of a laugh. "And you said you didn't threaten."

Bindu takes another sip of wine. His glance skitters again toward the door. Rey wonders if he really does think Virya might murder him during or after this meeting. That would explain him bringing a photographer who was also a sniper.

"Very well, jokes aside?" Bindu clears his throat. "You should have died in that box. But you didn't, implying either a complete miracle or else a very clever scheme on your part. I don't believe in miracles, which leaves only the scheme. So, how did you do it? Share that secret and I'll tell you about the X-16 System for free."

Rey fists her napkin under the table. She cannot, of course, tell Bindu how they survived the blast. _Well, you see, I used the Force to shield us, nearly turning myself into a living bomb in the process. Because I'm not Virya Vorian at all but Rey Skywalker of the Jedi. Charmed to meet you._

Bindu takes a sip of wine. "Or you could not tell me. But then I and everyone else will continue to take that as further evidence that you were behind the explosion and Rosshel's murder."

"If she were," Ben says, his arm still wrapped around Rey. "I'd take a private meeting with her a little more seriously than you are right now."

"Oh I am taking this seriously. Extremely so. You think I endure this risk lightly?" Again that skittering glance toward the door. He is worried for his life, Rey is certain of it now. She feels a wiggle spot for leverage and decides to press.

"I can't share the secret you're asking after. But I can pay your previous price for the X-16 information. And if that information proves useful to me, if _you_ prove to be useful, you can be assured that I will be quite motivated to keep you alive."

Ben's arm tightens around her. She ignores his silent warning, hoping this works.

Bindu considers this a moment, looking into the mouth of his wineglass like he might try drowning himself in it. "What are you saying? That you'll offer me protection? Or simply that you won't kill me once I tell you what you need to know."

"I'm saying if you prove useful, your continued survival would be in my best interest. Information is a valuable thing. But most valuable is survival. And I think I've proven that I'm very good at the latter. So do you want my help or not?"

Bindu does nothing for a moment. Then, with the look of a man leaping from a cliff, he extends his hand out to her. "Very well. We have a deal."

Rey barely keeps the grin off her face as she reaches across the table.

Three things happen then.

First, the string lights cut out, plunging them into darkness.

Second, something explodes in the harbor, bathing them in a flare of green and a rumbling aftershock like thunder. Fireworks, Rey realizes. Fireworks over the sea. She turns to stop Ben, whose already swearing, his arm shooting up off her shoulders, his body snapping to attention like a whip.

"Wait," Rey starts. "It's only-"

Third, the door flies open. A hive of armed soldiers swarm the terrace, blasters aimed at their table. "EVERYONE ON THE GROUND! NOW!"

_Force damn it,_ Rey thinks, her view of their attackers suddenly blocked by Ben's broad back. _There'll be no living with him after this. _


	28. I Want You to Look Like You

Rey guesses a dozen soldiers. But it's hard to be accurate in the dying emerald light. As the firework extinguishes and the shadows thicken, Rey slips her own blaster from her handbag. A click at her elbow tells her Bindu has one as well.

Then there's a soaring screech and three fans of lavender explode across the sky. Their attackers hesitate — this time Rey counts fifteen — surprised that the diners are also armed. For a moment, everybody pauses, uncertain what will happen next.

"Move over and I can get a clearer shot," Rey suggests to Ben's back.

But Ben doesn't move. He just stands between her and them, assessing. Trying to decide where to start.

"All of you, on the ground before I put you there!" A man demands. He swivels his blaster at Rey. "I'll start by putting a hole in her pretty-"

That makes Ben's decision easier. Said soldier hits the ground mid-sentence, a smoking hole where his mouth had been.

The balcony erupts. Crimson needles thread the air, shattering plates and crystal and chunks of stone. Overhead, the slow strobe of fireworks keep their eyes from adjusting, washing out the violence in floods of blue, green, gold and red. Rey deliberately bars herself from reaching for the Force. She knows better than to risk that now.

Behind her Bindu shoots, fumbles, and swears. Rey turns in the direction he'd been aiming to see the soldier he'd just missed readying to return fire. Rey drops the man before he can make the shot. Then she adjusts by twelve degrees to takes out a man half-hidden behind a pillar, aiming for Ben. A wine glass by her wrist explodes. Something chips into her cheek and stings against her wrist but she dismisses it, shooting back.

The next firework blooms crimson in the sky, washing out the needles of her ray gun. As the red light fades, a speck of it remains between Ben's shoulder blades, right in the notches of his spine.

_Weird_, Rey thinks. Then she realizes what she's seeing. The red dot sight of a sniper rifle. Bindu's sniper.

Rey's blaster clatters to the table. Her palms flatten on Ben's shoulder blades. She _shoves_. Ben staggers down to a knee, catching himself with one hand. He doesn't go all the way down, but it's enough.

Rey doesn't have time for relief. The shot meant for his spine glances her upper arm, searing flesh. Rey palms her blaster and shoots in the sniper's direction. A golden corkscrew detonates at the same time, effectively blinding her. No way to know if she's hit her mark.

Ben yanks her down to him, beneath the table. She lands flat on his chest. Half a second later, the sniper's return fire digs a half inch into the tabletop. Rey _tsks, _fingertips in Ben's ribs as she presses herself half-up onto her elbows. She'd missed then.

"Wait!" A frantic shout from above. Bindu. Rey twists as best she can beneath the table, just in time to see Bindu's expensive shoes climbing up onto the booth seat.

"No! Stop!" Rey's shout is lost in the clustered _booms_ of several azure starbursts.

Ben swears, savage in her ear. "Get him down!" He hisses, before rolling onto his stomach to return fire at the soldiers, who've formed a cluster around the door and started kneeling to get better shots at them.

Rey crawls on her elbows around the column of the table, pausing to drop a soldier who melts the marble tile an inch from Rey's wrist.

Bindu is still standing on the booth, rolling up onto his toes. "Don't shoot! They've offered me protection! Don't shoot!"

"Bindu!" Rey finally gets close enough to grab an ankle. "Get down! Before you -"

Bindu's tendons jerk in her hand. She doesn't hear the sniper's shot, but she doesn't need to. Bindu goes slack and crashes backwards onto the table overhead. Rey feels the impact through the table's central column. She hears the smashing of china, feels the light rain of shattered crystal showering over the table's edge. Something dark splatters over her fingers. She hopes it's wine.

"Force _damn _it!" she swears, releasing the ankle and crawling back toward Ben. "He's out!" she shouts, angling down onto her side so she can better fit beside him. Propped on an elbow, she squeezes off four quick shots, taking the two soldiers closest to them. Their positions are quickly filled by those standing behind.

Ben swears. "Fucking circular booths! I _told_ you- _Agh!_" He jerks. A ray singes the booth upholstery four inches from his brow.

"Yes _alright _you told me!" Rey snaps, finding the solider that had nearly hit Ben and putting a hole in his thigh. "Can you save it until we get out of here?! Any ideas on that welcome by the way!"

Ben just growls and takes out another soldier. "Here's an idea. We kill them all."

Rey grimaces. By now the doorway is clogged with soldiers, both dead and alive. Short of her and Ben somehow dropping every single one, there's no way they are leaving the same way they came in. And… hang on, are there _more_ soldiers now than there were to begin with? Rey kicks the table column, poking her head out to do a quick recount. She nearly loses an ear for it. Ben's arm lassos her waist and yanks her back from the line of sight.

"The_ fuck, _Rey!?"

Rey crawls back to the far end of the booth, pulling Ben with her as a frenzy of shots obliterate the floor where her head at been a moment ago. From here, they won't be hit unless a soldier lays down completely flat to aim at them, but they can't make any shots at anything other than their enemies' toes.

"We're not getting out that way. They're are twenty of them now, not including the dead ones."

"So?" Ben snaps, his forehead slick against hers as he tries to sit, folding his great height under the table.

"So you're brilliant plan of brute-forcing our way out won't work. They could have an army inside the restaurant. Even if we get to the door, we're screwed."

Ben swears, falling onto an elbow to squeeze out an irate volley at the soldier's boots. Once he's got that out of his system, he slides back to her. "Alright. You have a different plan then?"

As soon as he asks, she does. Rey hesitates, then nods slowly.

"Fuck me," Ben says.

"What? I haven't even told you yet."

"You don't have to. I can tell by your face you're having a Fuck Me kind of plan."

Rey spares him a dirty look, then yanks him by the collar to outline said plan directly into his ear.

**#**

"Stop shooting! We surrender!" Rey yells, sliding her blaster out to the middle of the floor.

Almost immediately, the soldier's fire stops. The only sound is the climbing keen and following boom of the firework display.

Then there's a harsh bark from one of the soldiers. "He throws his blaster too!"

Rey elbows Ben, who growls and chucks his blaster out beside hers. Their weapons sit in the middle of the balcony, well beyond their reach. Although this is part of Rey's plan, she feels stupidly vulnerable. She takes a breath, then shouts as clearly and calmly as she can manage. "Seeing as you brought soldiers instead of setting off another bomb, I assume your employer wants us brought to them alive."

A firework screeches and then bursts. Hard, emerald light illuminates a mound of bodies, a floor glossed in blood, and doorway filled with combat boots.

"Alive is what we promised," the solider yells back. "But based on the last five minutes, I'm growing less confident in that outcome."

"Well, lucky for you alive is also my preference," Rey shouts. "So why don't you tell us how we get out of here without you shooting us as soon as we stand up?"

There is a long, loaded pause. The fireworks slow, then stop altogether, as if they too are waiting for the response. Rey stares at the line of boots, heart in her throat and the booth seat pressed against her shoulders. Ben waits beside her, his body a column of heat pressed to her side.

Finally, the solider answers. "Hands above the table. Nice and slow so we can see they're empty."

Rey and Ben slowly raise their open hands above the table.

"Alright. You can stand up. Slow now. Too quick and we shoot."

Moving slow and keeping their hands up, Rey and Ben rise to their feet, until tabletop is at waist weight. Rey does her best to stare at the line of soldiers and not at the body sprawled over their dinner, Bindu laying lifeless at her waist. The dead man is so close, she could reach out and take his hand in hers.

"Alright," the solider says. In the dark, it's impossible to tell which one is speaking. "Now both of you walk around the table and come toward us, nice and slow. If either of you try to-"

The solider is cut off by a volley of shrieks, the grand finale starting. The sky lights up in a barrage of color and smoke.

"Now!" Rey lunges, snatching the blaster out of Bindu's cold hand. She squeezes a volley of shots off at the soldiers, twisting to step up onto the booth seat, and then onto the balcony rail.

With one hand she keeps firing, not even looking where she aims. The other finds Ben's as he steps up onto the railing beside her.

"You're so insane," he breathes, his bewildered glance caught in the smoke and color exploding all across the sky.

Rey squeezes his hand and together they leap.

**#**

They land in the ocean. Thankfully. Mercifully.

Except Rey grew up in a desert, where swimming isn't really a thing. And short of getting off the balcony, she doesn't have much of a plan.

And so she plunges, planless, into a black sea. The cold of it slams the air from her lungs. The current tumbles, distorting all sense of up and down. She is blind. Gasping, and then drowning. Panic floods her. She remembers the Force unraveling in her, a crushing thing of nature, and this feels just the same.

But then someone is pulling her, towing her upward. Ben.

Rey breaks the surface with a hacking gasp. The sound echoes strangely, but Rey is still scrambling, still blind and searching for something solid, still half drowning and trying to expunge the sea from her lungs. Ben pulls her to his chest.

"I got you." He guides her arms around his neck, then secures his arm around her waist. "Relax, it's okay. I've got you."

Rey clings to him, high on his shoulders, hacking ocean water down his back. She doesn't know how he feels so solid when they should be adrift, fighting the ocean's current. Waves rise and fall, enveloping her ribs and breasts, sometimes rising up to her shoulders, but Ben keeps her anchored high enough to safely breathe. Rey rests over his shoulder, her eyes and lungs burning with salt. Overhead, the grand finale continues its incessant percussion. Rey's glad for it though. The explosions smother the sound of her raking coughs.

When she finally drives all the salt water from her body, Rey lifts her head and blinks at their surroundings. Ben has pulled them beneath a dock, a hiding place she'd never have thought of herself. She slides a little down his chest to get a better look, keeping her arms loosely looped around his neck. His mask survived the fall, somehow, his eyes hidden behind it. One of his arms is wrapped around a dock post, keeping them in place, the other around her. Overhead, a ceiling of thick wood planks provides cover against anyone searching for them from above.

And someone _is _searching. Spotlights sweep all around them like sharks circling prey. One glides straight for them, and Rey's grip tightens involuntarily around Ben's neck. But the spotlight simply hits the dock and skates the planks overhead, fragments slipping through the cracks and painting little lines of light on Ben's mask.

Still, when Ben's fingers press gently into the nape of her neck, Rey tucks her face into the bend of his shoulder, trying to make herself small.

"Will they find us?" she whispers.

"No. Not unless they get in the water."

_And what makes you think they won't?_ Rey wants to ask, but another searchlight sweeps inches from their post and the sound of footfalls overhead traps the question in her throat.

"Nothing?" Someone asks. Rey thinks she recognizes the raspy voice of the solider she'd negotiated with earlier.

"No, Sir. We have all the searchlights going but there's no sign of them. Maybe a riptide dragged them out."

"Keep looking. If she makes it to the Frost Ball, we don't get paid. I want every inch of this harbor dragged. Have the boats bring out the fishing nets if you must."

"Maybe they didn't make the leap," a woman suggests. "Maybe they're spattered across the cobblestones under the balcony."

"Then look there too," the commander replies. "Going back with parts is better than going back empty handed. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Alright, then get to it."

The boards clack and creak overhead as the soldiers spring into action. Rey is grateful for the sound of lapping water, but still holds her breath until the footsteps make their way off the dock.

"What now? Do we swim for the ship?" she whispers once she's sure the soldiers have left.

Ben shakes his head. "If we go now, they'll see us. We have to wait until they move on."

Rey nods, fighting back a shiver. Now that she's no longer drowning, her body provides an inventory of other complaints. A screaming burn on her shoulder from where the sniper grazed her. A stabbing pain her wrist — she finds a gash that the ocean has already washed clean and filled with brine. And a throbbing in her ankle that she suspects happened during their fall.

The ocean's frigid current pulls the fabric of her dress up around her navel. Eventually, its cold starts seeping into her skin. Her wounds go numb, until cold is all she can feel. The searchlights continue their predatory circles, and Rey's jaw beings to ache from clenching against the chill. Ben seems to read her, hand shifting to cover the bare skin of her back. _Stupid dress, _Rey thinks bitterly, even as she sends a silent thanks to the Force for the pocket of shared heat between them.

**#**

By the time it's safe to swim for it, Rey is blue-lipped and shivering. Her muscles are numb and sluggish, and to her complete mortification Ben has to help her walk as they stagger up onto the rocky shore. She tries protesting when he swings her arm up over his shoulders, but he's coping much better than she is. Besides, her teeth are chattering too violently to make a convincing argument.

"You got us out of there alive," Ben says. "Let me get us to the ship."

She relents and lets him half carry, half drag her over craggy tide pools, glowing blue with bio-luminescent algae.

"Aren-n-n't you c-c-cold?" she chatters as they reach the dunes where they'd tucked away their ship.

"I'm bigger," he says, legs pumping as he hauls her over the last hill of sand. "More mass means more time to get hypothermia."

"I k-k-know t-t-the science, bast-t-tard."

"I know you do. You told me all about it when you were doped up. Remember?"

Rey falls to her knees at the top of the dune, wishing desperately for a piece of scrap metal to sled the rest of the way down. Instead Ben just carries her in his arms.

When he parts the tall grass, the matte black ship is one of the most beautiful sights Rey has ever seen. Ben folds her into the passenger seat, taking the pilot's controls up for himself. He turns on the heat on before he starts the engine, and activates the ship's cloaking device while the thrusters warm up.

Rey doesn't even complain that Ben's taken the wheel. Instead she focuses on staving off the sudden urge to close her eyes and sleep. Drowsiness is a symptom of hypothermia.

Once the engine is warm, Ben shoots them up into the sky, through the planet's gaseous atmosphere, and into the stars and velvet blackness of space. They streak past a warship parked behind one of the planet's moons, no doubt what the soldiers had used to get here, and Ben lightspeed skips twice before it can detect them. Rey has to admit she's impressed by the maneuver, even as she holds her hands up to the heating vents and winces at the pain that returns before feeling.

When they're too far for anyone to track, Ben tucks the ship in an asteroid field and turns to her. "Are you alright?"

"Been better," Rey rasps. "But I'll live."

Even through the mask she can feel his concern. His carbon fiber features reflect the dashboard lights as he looks her over for injury. He finds one, reaching out to pluck a shard of wine glass still embedded in her cheek. Rey flinches at the sting.

"Sorry," Ben says, dropping his hand from her face.

"It's alright," she assures. "Feeling pain again is a good sign."

She tries to smile reassuringly, but finds that she can't. And not only because of numbness in her cheeks. The weight of their near death experience comes slamming down, leaving her feeling bottled up and shaken. Rosshel's auction had been different. She hadn't been awake for the immediate aftermath. And by the time she'd awoken to process it all, she'd been safely tucked and drugged up in a hospital bed. This time, however, there is no mental escape. She shudders, hoping Ben will think it's from the cold.

"What about you? Are you hurt?"

"No," he says. "I'm fine."

Rey tries to see through to where his eyes should be. The mask is scorched on its left side, a charred streak where a blaster had grazed him. Suddenly Rey is overwhelmed by how very much she hates it. Hates the idea that Ben might be lying to her from beneath it, telling her he's fine and holding a different answer in his hidden eyes. She wants to see his face. His real face.

She reaches out and pulls off his mask, letting it clatter it to the floor.

Ben glances at it, then questioningly to her.

"I hate it," Rey says simply. "I hate the mask."

Then she's reaching, through the physical space between them, past the mental fortress of questioning and doubt. Her fingers brush his cheek, grateful to feel that he is warm and solid. Alive. She leans in toward him. "When I do this," she explains, "I want to see your face."

Ben freezes beneath her touch. At his stillness, Rey halts, a breath from his lips. Then ever so gently, he puts his hands on her shoulders pushes her back.

Rey blinks, shame knifing into her. "Sorry," she falters. "I thought… if you don't want to…"

Ben shakes his head and Rey's heart sinks. Then he reaches up and tugs off her wig. She'd forgotten she was wearing it. Ben pulls the blonde mess free, and then the hair net beneath. Rey's plain, brown tresses fall around her shoulders and neck.

Ben takes a moment just to look at her, drinking every detail of her features, his dark eyes going straight through her. Blunt fingers skim her jaw and he takes her face in his hands.

"When I do this," he tells her, voice low and graveled, summoning a shiver up her spine. " I want you to look like you."

And then he kisses her.

_**A/N: **__See you next week! :3 _ _Check out my Twitter for chapter previews nanirain1_


	29. Hearts on Fire

Ben presses Rey against the window, not hard but just hard enough that she, already breathless from their kissing, feels a pressure building in her body. She breaks the kiss for air, arms rising to encircle Ben's shoulders and keep him close while she breathes.

She needn't have bothered. Ben has no intention of being anywhere but close. While Rey recovers, he bends to find new places to kiss.

Rey lets her head loll back, hands sifting through Ben's black hair, skating the spinal notches down the back of his neck, until she hits the damp neckline of his shirt. She tugs half-thinkingly. In a single motion, Ben straightens and pulls it over his head, a flash of flexing arms and chest, and then he is back pressing up on her again. Her nerves frissons at the new, bare contact. Ben's skin is rough and crystaled with salt. Ocean-dipped, she tastes it on his shoulder, and Rey's head is swimming.

She is happy for strength of him, the heat of him, pinning her to the wall. She breathes in a thick smell. Marine and masculine and something that's of the two of them. She steals half lidded glimpses in the dim, dashboard lighting. The impossible breadth of his shoulders, bare and domed in her hands. The splay of his fingers by her face as he half-props his weight against the wall. The planes and dips of his chest, flush against her own. She wants to be even closer to him. To be kissing him again.

Before she can find Ben's lips, Ben finds her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her neck. He brands each spot with the heat of his mouth. He goes behind her ear, inhaling deep and making Rey arch against him, surprising them both. The _sound _he makes when her hipbones dig into his. The way he whisper-swears her name into her ear. It winds her whole body up like a chord ready to snap.

She can't remember which of them started down this path. Can't remember much of anything, because Ben's touch is some obliterating force that blots out everything else. All thought. All cold. A lifetime of loneliness. Until there is nothing but the taste and touch and smell of him.

"Ben," Rey breathes, twisting fingers in his hair now, pressing him down so his kisses are even harder against her. She feels the graze of teeth and it's like being brushed with a live wire.

Ben's forehead rests on the wall beside her, freeing both his hands to slide around Rey's waist and over the notches of her hipbones. His left stops there, anchoring her. His right glides down to her thigh. Rey opens like a flower, and Ben's palm tracks the curve of her inner thigh. Just beside his knuckles there is a node of heat, aching for contact. For him. Rey's face crumples when it doesn't come. She is overwhelmed.

"Ben… _Ben." _

"Yes?" he answers, a bit raggedly. A bit belatedly, as if it takes him a moment to register his name on her lips.

"I just…" Rey shakes her head. "I just feel..." But how to begin? How to say what she feels when _thoughts_ won't move in straight lines anymore, let alone words?

"I know." Ben kisses the corner of her mouth. "I feel it too."

Yes. He does. She knows by the perfect pressure of his touch. The raw edge in his voice. He knows her. And she knows him. Their mutual perception of each other is something she can almost _feel_, skating at the corners of her reach. They are close to coming together. So close finding each other gain.

_I feel it too._

Comprehension slaps Rey in the face, cold and rude as an ocean wave. Her eyes fly open. Her hands jerk on Ben's shoulders, suddenly white knuckled. "Wait," she rasps. "Stop."

Ben stops immediately. He pulls back and goes absolutely still. "What is it?" His lips are kiss swollen, dark eyes dilated with want, but he's pushing past all that to search her for any signs of pain. When she doesn't answer right away, the hand that had been skating her thigh leaves to brace against the wall. At the absence, Rey nearly throws her comprehension out the window and slams his mouth back onto hers.

"What's wrong?" he breathes. "Does something hurt? Did I-"

"No," Rey squeezes her eyes shut. She can't believe she's doing this. "It's not that."

"Then… what?"

"I think we need to stop."

Ben straightens, putting another inch of space between them. "You want me to stop?"

_No. _A very loud part of her screams. _I want you to _never_ stop. I want you to keep going forever until there isn't any difference between the start of you and the end of me and we're just one thing, like we were always meant to be. _She forces those words down her throat, like swallowing stones. She manages to rake up a, "Yes."

Ben backs away completely, so that no part of them is touching. He is still breathless, still shirtless and glossed in the dim dashboard light. The want in his eyes is a visible thing, as is his struggle to regain control over it, because she's asked him to. And, Force help her, watching him wage that war is kind of a turn on in itself. Rey has to look away.

"I felt something," she says, clearing her throat and blinking herself back to focus. "I think it was there the whole time. I just didn't realize-" She turns and Ben is staring at her. And by the Force he's so _fucking _attractive, her fingers twitch to —

"Can you…" Rey averts her gaze to the crumpled long-sleeved shadow on the floor.

He doesn't move for it. "Rey. If you don't want to, you can tell me."

"It isn't that I don't want to. Believe me, I _want_ to."

"…But?"

"But didn't you feel the dyad?"

Ben frowns. "What about it?"

"You didn't feel it?"

"I was… a little preoccupied."

He glances up and down her, and she feels the cooling spots on her body where his mouth and hands had been. She does her best to shove them from her mind. "I could nearly feel you in the Force. The way you used to be. If we keep going, we'll reforge the dyad. I know it. I _felt _it almost happen."

Ben stares at her in silence, his expression unreadable.

Could he really not have felt it at all? Then a thought steals across her mind. A dark, horrible thought. "Two mutual desires," Rey murmurs a little bitterly. "I guess you finally found a way to get me there. Nicely done."

And the look in Ben's face, the sharp hurt as if she'd slapped him, makes Rey immediately regret her words. If he'd pulled away from her physically before, now he is completely out of her emotional reach. His reaction tells her she'd been wrong. He hadn't just been seducing her as a trick to reforge the bond.

"I'm sorry," Rey says. "I didn't mean -"

"Yes you did."

Rey swallows, unable to deny that she'd had the thought. She'd even spoken it aloud. And now that it's out there between them, there's no way to take it back.

"I know I've been manipulative," Ben says, his voice as cold as it had ever been from behind the mask of Kylo Ren. "But I'd hoped you understood me better than that."

"Ben, I'm sorry. I'm just… frustrated."

"And I'm not?"

"I'm _sorry_," Rey stresses, hating the insufficiency of those words. "It was a horrible thought. I didn't mean to have it, I just… I know you think reforging the bond is the only way to fix everything. And sometimes you get… so determined."

"Yeah." Ben sits down in the pilot seat, pulling his shirt back over his head. "I get it."

"Ben-"

"I want to save you, Rey." Ben says sharply. "And you're right. There's almost nothing I wouldn't do to achieve that. So, I see it. I see why you thought I might've had… ulterior motives."

But his bitterness says something different. And the words sound awful coming from his mouth. Even more awful than they'd sounded inside her head.

"But believe me when I tell you that I didn't." Ben looks at her and she can see the heat still burning beneath the ice of his anger. "The only thing on my mind was you."

Rey swallows. It's difficult around the knot in her throat. "I know," she says. "I know that now."

Ben nods, putting his hands on the joystick and starting up the engine. He doesn't even look at her for the rest of the way home.

**#**

Finn and Poe are waiting in the hangar. When Ben pulls in to dock, Poe's mouth falls open and his brows slam together. It's his first time seeing the ship. He starts striding for it before the engine has even shut down, ignoring Finn who tries to reel him back. His dark curls blow wildly in the ship's wake.

"What is _this_?" he demands as soon as the ship's hatch unseals. "And why haven't I seen her before?"

"He means to ask 'how did it go?'" Finn says.

Ben leaps out of the ship strides wordlessly past the two men. Rey emerges scowling.

"That good, huh?"

"Bindu's dead," Rey says. "And we didn't get any information out of him. Poe, please try not to have a stroke, alright?"

"Are you wet?" Finn asks.

Rey twitches. "I jumped into an ocean."

"I thought you didn't swim."

"She doesn't," Ben barks tersely, like a knife lobbed over his shoulder. "Not that she'd let that small detail stop her."

Finn's face creases in concern. "Force, Rey. Are you alright? Any injuries? Should we get you to the-"

"If she were injured," Ben says loudly, over half way to the exit by now, "she'd have told you."

His harsh tone halts Finn mid-reach for Rey's arm. He throws an irritated look at Ben's storming back and then raises a questioning brow at Rey.

Even Poe, who looks like he's considering climbing into the pilot seat and making a run for it with the ship, frowns faintly in Ben's direction. "What's got him worked up?"

"He's fine," Rey says, not knowing if that's actually true. "Look, can we debrief later? I need to change. And then maybe run the obstacle course or hit something in the wreck room to blow off some steam."

"Actually, we have bad news of our own," Finn says.

Rey groans. "What?"

"While you were gone, Senator Marcus took his stealth bombers to the X-16 System."

Ben halts at the door, listening without turning around.

"And then?" Rey asks, hoping the sudden dread in her stomach will be an overreaction.

"And then nothing," Poe says, hopping down from his self-guided tour of the cockpit. "We think they're all dead."

**#**

Rey gets to shower and change before going to Leia's quarters. When she arrives she's surprised to find the General there and no one else. Leia sits behind her desk on the other side of the room, pouring over a tablet. She rolls back when she sees Rey in the doorway.

"Where is everyone?" Rey asks, closing the door behind her.

"Cleaning up various messes. I sent Finn and Pie to hold off the Senators. Ben is questioning Virya."

Something in Rey twinges. "Virya?"

"If anyone could guess whose behind this it would be her. Ben still doesn't want her in the council meetings, but he's going to see if she'll tell him anything directly. She trusts him more than any of the rest of us."

"Right," Rey says. And then, because that twinging has turned into a full on twist, she asks, "Is Rose with them? For body guarding?"

"I didn't think Virya would try anything with Ben around."

Rey forces a smile. "You might be surprised..."

"You can join them when we're done here. But first I need you to tell me exactly what happened today."

Rey recounts their disastrous mission at the restaurant, providing as much detail as she can. Leia asks a few questions but mostly she just listens. As Rey tells the story, she get more disheartened at her own lack of information to show for it.

"We didn't even get a chance to figure out who the soldiers were working for," Rey confesses. "Or why Bindu was shot by his own sniper. I'm sorry, Leia. I'm a terrible spy."

"No," Leia sighs. "Anyone else would have been killed four over times already. You heard about Senator Marcus?"

"Finn and Poe told me. What happened? I thought Kiran told him to run a stealth mission."

"He did. Which means whatever was in that system was waiting for him. The only thing we know for certain is that X-16 was a trap. It probably wasn't even meant for Marcus, the poor, bull-headed fool."

"Do you think it was meant for me?"

Leia glances at her questioningly.

"I mean for Virya?" Rey explains. "Maybe Bindu, or someone he as working for, had him pass that along to her at the auction in the hopes that she'd go investigate for herself." Guilt knifes through her, sharp and unexpected. She hadn't liked Senator Marcus. In fact, she'd actively _disliked_ him in their first and final meeting. But she also didn't like the idea of him catching a bullet meant for her.

"It's possible," Leia says. "But at the restaurant you said Bindu seemed afraid Virya would make an attempt on _his _life. Not that _he _was trying to kill _her_."

"That is what I thought at the time," Rey admits. "But what if he was actually afraid of someone else? He was ready to make a deal with me for protection. What if whoever he was really working for was the one he was worried about? When he kept looking at the door, I thought he was worried about getting out. But what if he was actually worried about who was coming in? Maybe he was sent to that restaurant as bait for the real target."

"Virya," Leia finishes, her brow creasing in thought. "If this is true, it would mean she's been the target since..."

"Maybe since the beginning," Rey says. "The Vorian's ship was the first thing to be bombed, before I even started this mission. Then it was quiet until the auction, when a bomb went off in the _Vorian _box. Rosshel could have just been collateral damage. And then Virya sets up a one-on-one dinner with Bindu and an entire squadron attacks? Whoever is taking out the Inner Circle, maybe they want her gone first. And even the initial explosion, the one that killed her family, we assumed her father Doran was the target of the attack. But what if whoever blew up the Vorian ship was trying to get to _her_?"

Grave alarm crosses Leia's face. Her finger presses a button in the armrest of her hover chair.

"Yes, Leia?" 3PO's voice crackles through a speaker.

"3PO, I need you to get everyone in here. Finn, Poe, and Ben. Tell Rose to resume her post at Virya's room when Ben leaves. Tell them Rey and I need to speak with everyone now."


	30. Hearts of Ash

Once the others have gathered in Leia's apartment, Rey shares her theory with the group.

"If this is true," Poe says darkly, "and Virya's been the primary target all along, then Rey is way more danger on these missions than we'd originally thought."

"We should pull the whole operation," Finn says. "We've had too many close calls already. And now we know they'll come for her at the ball."

"What? No," Rey protests immediately. "If we pull it, everything up until now would have been for nothing. We'll be right back where we started."

"And if the next assassination attempt takes you out, we'll be even worse off."

"It won't. I've managed to survive so far. The only difference is now I'll be ready."

Poe sighs. "I don't love this. But Rey has a point. It might even make our job easier."

Finn looks at Poe like he's sprouted a second head and started screaming in ancient Sith tongues.

"Think about it," Poe says, "she's spent so much time chasing shadows at these functions. At least now we know that whoever is behind the murders will be coming after her. She just needs to show up."

"Sorry, I missed the part where you think the mission got easier," Finn says. "Because from where I'm standing, our strategy just deteriorated from sending her in as a spy to sending her in as _bait_."

"I'm not a helpless damsel, Finn."

"No. You're not. You're our best fighter and one of the last Jedi in the universe. Today, I literally heard a Senator Kiran call you our Rey of Hope. If anything happens to you-"

"All those are also reasons I can't just sit on the sidelines. Besides, I'm not going in alone." Rey glances toward Ben, who sits in an armchair staring into the gas fire. He hasn't said a word since he's arrived, hasn't met her gaze once, though Rey's eyes keep skating the room to look for his. It might be her imagination, but there seems to be a darkness growing in the stillness of his frame, distilling in his blackness of his eyes.

"Oh, right." Finn says. "How could I forget, you're partnered up with someone who can't use the Force _at all_."

"Finn-"

"He's cut off from the Force, and the next time you use it you might turn into a walking bomb! Yeah, this seems like a great plan."

The words are a slap in the face. Even worse is that when Rey opens her mouth to counter, there's nothing she can say.

"They won't be completely alone," Poe reminds Finn, "because we'll be there too. That was _your _plan, remember? You were okay with that."

"Yeah, that was back when this was a spy-mission. Not a bait-mission."

"Ben?" Leia's interrupts what is fast becoming an unproductive argument. "What do you think?"

Ben stares into the fire, almost as if he hadn't heard the question.

"You're not okay with this," Finn says. It sounds more like a threat than a statement. "There's no way you can be okay with this."

"I agree with Dameron," Ben says. "Her going to the Frost Ball is the best option we have."

Finn stands. "Well, I guess I'm the idiot. I can't believe I actually started to believe you'd changed."

"Finn," Poe starts. "Calm down."

"If you'd really changed, you wouldn't let her knowingly walk into a trap this dangerous. But I guess you're still letting your darkness dictate your decisions." Finn strides across the room and slams both hands on the arms of Ben's chair, leaning down into his face. "It's all about the ends, right? And you don't care who gets hurt in the process. It was like that when you lead the storm troopers. And it's still like that now. At the end of the day you're not Ben Solo. You're still just Kylo Ren."

"_Finn,_" Rey snaps.

"You _are _an idiot," Ben confirms calmly. "The one who keeps leaning into the darkness again is you, and you convince yourself it's the light. Turning a blind eye to the bigger picture, all for the sake of your personal feelings."

Finn straightens. "What in the Force are you talking about?"

"Think about it. If we pull the mission now, the First Order rebuilds," Ben says. "Maybe not in a month, maybe not in three. But sooner than later you'll have another war on your hands. She died to win the last one. Or don't you remember the feeling of her life slipping away in the Force?"

"Shut up," Finn spits. But Rey sees the uncertainty in his eyes, to her immense relief. Somehow, Ben is always able to open Finn's eyes when he's straying down the darker path.

Ben stands, forcing Finn to take a step back. "We can fight this all night. But at the end of the day it's not our decision. Rey?"

She blinks. "Yes?"

"You're the one risking your life. You should be the one to decide."

"Rey," Finn says, bordering on pleading now. "We could find another way. Just think about it. Please."

But she doesn't need to think about it. There is only one choice she, a Jedi, can make. "I'll go."

Finn recoils. Then, defeated, he turns and walks out Leia's door. Poe watches him go, arms crossed and mouth grim. But he nods solemnly to Rey, giving her his unspoken support. Ben just keeps looking through her instead of at her, his expression closed tight.

"It's a brave choice, Rey," Leia says. "One worthy of the Skywalker name. I know Luke would be proud."

Rey glances at Ben, wondering what those words will trigger for him. But his face remains locked in its military reserve. He turns to Leia the way one might turn to a commanding officer. "If we're finished here?"

Leia nods. Her son sweeps from the room.

Rey hesitates only a moment before going after him.

**#**

She knew Ben had a long stride, but she's surprised to see how far he's gotten with only a brief head start. She catches a glimpse of black rounding a corner and breaks into a jog to catch up. She starts to call out but his name lodges in her throat. After how the day has gone, she isn't sure he'd wait.

"You think I made the right choice, don't you?" She's a little breathless when she falls in beside him.

If he's surprised she followed him, he doesn't show it.

"I don't think it wasn't even a matter of choice."

"Because Finn's wrong. There is no better way."

Ben turns sharply down a narrow stairway and starts to descend. Rey is forced to fall back and follow at his heels.

"Right?"

"That," Ben confirms, footfalls heavy as he descends multiple levels. "And because that's just who you are."

Rey's chest tightens. What did he mean by that? A Skywalker? A Jedi?

Before she can decide which to ask, Ben throws open a door on the lowest level. Rose stands before an unmarked door with her blaster, raising her brow as Ben and Rey come bursting in from the stairwell.

Rey pauses. She'd assumed they were going to the usual empty storage room.

"Thought you were done with her," Rose says, looking around Ben to slant a questioning glance at Rey.

"I wasn't."

"Does Leia want me to-"

"Go finish whatever you were doing in the generator room. This won't take long."

Rose only hesitates a moment before stepping aside and pressing her thumb to the lock. The door blinks green and Ben hauls it open. Rey jams her boot into the door's frame to keep it from closing in her face.

"Everything okay?" Rose asks under her breath. "He seems broody. Like, more broody than usual."

"I'll stay with him," Rey assures. "Don't worry."

"Okay," Rose nods, looking unconvinced. "I'll check on the generator. Back in ten."

"Thanks," Rey claps the other girl on the shoulder, then follows Ben inside.

**#**

Virya's chambers aren't at all what Rey had been expecting. She'd always imagined the beautiful, elegant woman inside a beautiful, elegant space. Perhaps that had been naive, but Rey honestly hadn't envisioned Virya suffering for anything less. So she's surprised to find a room that had clearly been used for storage before it was halfheartedly converted into passable living quarters. It was spartan. Cold, iron walls framing a cold, iron floor. It reminded Rey of the abandoned wrecks she used to shelter in on Jakku. Someone had dragged down a mismatched folding chair and wobbly card table. There was a metal utility rack spanning one of the walls, intended for hanging power tools but now serving as a makeshift closet. A dozen elegant pieces that Rey recognized as the Seamster's handiwork were arranged as carefully as prized art.

Virya sits on her bed, which is actually just a stack of crates pushed into the corner to keep a soldier's bedroll off the floor. She looks up when Ben enters, putting aside the notebook she'd been writing in. Even with no makeup and a simple shift dress, the woman is like an oasis. A thing of beauty in a barren wasteland.

"Back so soon?" Virya slides from the bed in a way that's vaguely sensual. Rey swears that it's deliberate. The other woman only makes half an attempt at concealing her disappointment at Rey's presence. "I see you've brought a tag along. That's unfortunate."

Rey opens her mouth to return that Virya's _existence _is unfortunate, but Ben gets there first.

"Did you know?"

Virya stills like a fox that's just caught scent of a wolf. "I know a great deal of things, Lord Ren. You'll have to be more specific."

"Did you know," Ben says, the edge in his voice laid bare now, "that you were the target of the assassination attempts?"

Virya tips her head. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."

And suddenly, Ben is across the room, shoving Virya into the wall. Hard. She braces, barely in time to save the back of her head from being concussed.

"Ben!" Rey startles. "What -?"

_"Don't_ lie to me, Virya," Ben snarls. "Force help you if you're lying to me."

Rey falters, uncertain. If this is just a very convincing scare tactic, the worst thing she could do would be to interrupt before Virya gave in. But if it isn't, if Ben really is as close as he seems to crossing over into violence…

"I'm giving you a chance to tell the truth," he menaces. "You won't get another. Did you know whoever was behind the murders would come for you next? Did you know that by posing her as you, we were sending her to the Inner Circle with a bloody fucking target painted on her head!?" Ben grips Virya's shoulder, pressing bruises into creamy skin. His other hand flexes at Virya's throat, an inch from her windpipe.

Anyone would struggle. Anyone's gaze would dart around the room, searching for escape. But Virya remains completely still, staring Ben dead in the eye. "As I said, my Lord, I don't know what you're talking about."

Her cold steel response doesn't seem to appease Ben. If anything, the grimace on his face sharpens until it's almost a snarl. But it's the familiar dark flash in his eyes that decides it for Rey. She has to stop this now, before it goes too far. She crosses the room and covers Ben's hand with her own.

"That's enough, Ben." She pushes Ben's wrist down from Virya's throat. "I believe her."

For a moment, he resists. For a horrible, tense moment, Rey sees the rage flare and thinks he might try to shake her off. Might try to squeeze a different story from Virya's throat. But then he looks at Rey. Their eyes meet, and she sees the black fire gutter, shrinking from a blaze to an ember. She sees him finding his way back to her.

Ben lets Rey lower his hand from Virya's throat, then interlocks their fingers and grips, as if she is a lifeline.

Across the room, the door bangs open. Rose stands gripping her blaster, glaring daggers at Ben. "Hey," she says sharply. "What's going on in here?"

"We're fine, Rose," Rey says without breaking eye contact with Ben. "Right?"

Ben's jaw flexes but he releases his grip on Virya's shoulder.

The woman half staggers, half slides across the wall. And for the first time, Rey catches a fleeting shadow of fear in the woman's expression.

"If you're lying," Ben tells her, his voice quiet and cold, "our deal is off. You won't have my protection. In fact, if I find out you're lying, you should run. Because I'll be the first one to come for you. Am I making myself clear?"

"Inescapably," Virya says. The acid is nearly enough to hide the hurt in her reply. Nearly.

"Good," Ben says. Then he turns on his heel to leave, still holding tight to Rey's hand.

**#**

When they get back to the dorms, Rey doesn't even stop by her own room. Ben is still gripping her hand, even though anyone might see them. He tows her inside his apartment and doesn't let go until the lock clicks behind them.

He walks over to his desk and picks up a copy of the text Rey had discovered, the one that told of the terrible power and suffering of a dyad. Ben stares at it as if he's never seen it before. Then with sudden violence, he hurls it into the wall. It falls in a papery heap, spine broken, pages like damaged feathers.

Rey stands in silence by the door as Ben shovels his hands into his hair and sits heavily on the edge of his bed, elbows propped on knees. She waits a long moment before crossing the room to stand beside him.

"So I guess you really didn't want me to go to the Frost Ball after all," she guesses. "Despite what you said to Finn."

"I forced myself to be rational in front of the others," Ben says into his lap. "But everything he said is how I feel inside."

Rey lays a hand on the nape of his neck. It's the first time they've touched since their failed attempt at intimacy. It's like a deep draw of water in the middle of a desert.

"It'll be alright. I've faced danger before."

"You had the Force before," Ben says. "Now even that's a risk to your life. And I'm the reason. I distorted the dyad. I came up with the idea of you being a spy. I thought I'd broken free of this curse, but everything I touch still turns to ash. Maybe I should just turn back. We can repair the dyad, save your life, and bring balance to the Force. And I can return to the dark where I belong."

"Shut up," Rey says, "we're not doing that."

She pulls gently and he doesn't fight her. He lets her guide him until his forehead is pressed to her navel.

"See? Still solid. I haven't turned to ash. And I'm not letting the Force separate us again. You're on the side that you want. The side that you chose. You chose me, and I chose you, and neither of us are going back on that choice. We'll deal with the Inner Circle. Then we'll deal with the dyad. Alright?"

Ben wilts, leaning into her touch. He wraps an arm around her waist. Loosely at first, then tighter, as if she is the only thing anchoring him to the world.

"I'm sorry we fought today," Rey says softly, sifting fingers through the dark hair at the nape of his neck. "I won't ask you to forgive me. But I want you to believe that I'm sorry."

Ben just holds to her, so Rey lays her hands on either side of his jaw and tips his face up into the light.

"Believe me?" she asks.

He answers by pulling her down into his lap and tipping her face for a long, slow kiss.


	31. Heart to Heart

That night Ben falls asleep before Rey, for the first time since they've started spending nights together. He drifts off after an hour of laying alongside each other, trading slow touches and careful kisses, a communion in pain that can't be understood beyond the two of them.

Rey watches his breathing slow, counts his freckles a dozen times. Then, when she is certain he's asleep, she untangles herself from the sheets and fishes out the first aid kit stocked beneath every dormitory bed. Moving silently, she pulls on her boots and jacket and, leaving Ben sleeping, slips out into the hall.

She's exhausted. It had taken all her will power to not drift off with him. But this is something that needs to be done and it's better off done without him. She finds her way back to the narrow stairwell and takes it to the lowest level, retracing the route to Virya's room. The door is bolted from the outside, an extra precaution while Rose sleeps. Rey knocks.

There is no reply.

She tries again and is again met with silence.

Rey steps in close, speaking as loudly as she dares into the door's seam. "Virya? It's Rey."

Nothing.

Rey sighs. Her time is limited. If Ben wakes to find her gone, he'll tear the entire ship apart.

"I'm coming in," she says, pulling back the bolt and pressing her thumb to the lock.

The door slides open to reveal the same spartan room she'd followed Ben into a few hours ago. A folding chair and card table. A small desk lamp and space heater that kick off thin halos of light and heat. Virya sits on her bedroll, filling out the same notebook as before. This time she doesn't even look up when her visitor enters.

"Hi." Rey loiters awkwardly by the door. "I knocked but you didn't answer."

"You were coming in whether I answered or not," Virya says. "There didn't seem to be much point."

"Right. Well, I brought you this," Rey holds up the first aid kit, feeling as transparent as a figurine of glass. "I thought maybe you could use it."

"And why would you think that?" Virya doesn't even look up.

"Because… your shoulder?"

"What about it?"

Rey frowns, uncertain whether Virya is trying to make Rey say it aloud or if she's pretending nothing happened. Either is a strange, manipulative game.

Virya flips a page and continues scrawling. "You could keep standing there doltishly, wasting both of our time, or you could drop the insipid charity act and say whyever you're really here."

"Alright. I came to talk."

"Lovely."

"Did you know you were the target of the assassination attempts?"

For a moment Virya seems decided to ignore the question. She fills out an entire page in her notebook and then, just when Rey is ready to repeat herself, says, "Sorry. I thought you were here when I answered the same question from Lord Ren."

"I was. That's sort of why I thought it would be good to give it a second go."

"Because you thought you could be more convincing than him?" one of Virya's perfect eyebrows arches. The corner of her mouth curls.

Rey inhales deeply. She can't rise to Virya's baiting if she wants to get anywhere, even if the woman is being stubbornly uncooperative. "Ben handled it… badly. I wanted to ask you myself. As an ally."

Virya's pen stops but her eyes stay lowered on the page. The curl spreads into a thin smile, a wash of bitterness over her pretty face. She murmurs something that Rey only catches the ends of.

"…stand you."

"Sorry? You didn't understand me?"

"No. I said I cannot _stand _you."

"Ah. Well, the feelings mutual, if it makes you feel any better. But even so, I still think Ben was out of line." Rey starts to cross the room, aiming for the folding chair beside Virya's bed. As she gets closer, Virya tenses. She turns her face away from Rey and toward the wall. A curtain of lush, blonde hair falls between them. But it doesn't fall fast enough for Rey to miss the glimpse of redness rimming Virya's eyes.

Rey halts, briefly stunned.

Virya has been crying.

Rey bites her tongue, knowing the woman doesn't want her coming any closer. Definitely doesn't want Rey making an attempt to sooth her or ask if she's alright. So instead Rey stays right where she is and pretends she hasn't noticed. The cruelest thing she could do now would be to wound Virya's pride as well.

"Look," Rey says. "I know we don't get along. I won't insult you by pretending otherwise. You haven't exactly been pleasant since you got here. But you also haven't tried to screw us over. And we couldn't have gotten as far as we have without you, so… I guess what I'm trying to say is, even though we're not best friends or anything, you haven't given me any reason not to trust you."

"Ren doesn't trust me. I'm surprised you'd take an opposing side to him."

Rey snorts. "That's pretty much the basis of our relationship."

Virya flinches. Rey winces at the less than thoughtful word choice. _Relationship _probably hadn't the best term to get Virya to open up.

"Anyway, this isn't about Ben. It's about you and me and whoever murdered your family. Whoever is trying to murder _you_. I don't want to get you in trouble. I just want us to keep helping each other."

Virya keeps her face turned, the curtain of platinum hair between them. "Suppose I did know," she says, as lightly as if she were pondering whether it would rain. "Suppose I knew and I'd been keeping it a secret. What would you do then?"

"I'd do my best to understand why. And I'd ask you to tell me anything else you know that might help keep us alive."

"Then you'd run off and tell Ren," Virya finishes flatly. "You get your information. He gets to pick up where he left off."

"No. If I tell Ben anything, it would only be what he needs to know to be safe, and only on the the condition that he doesn't retaliate against you."

Virya laughs, cold as the ice moon outside. "As if he'd let himself be bound by such a request. Lord Ren would never-"

"He's not Lord Ren anymore, Virya," Rey says, gentle but firm. "You know that in your heart. Kylo Ren might have been an island but Ben Solo has allies. Friends. People he looks out for and who look out for him in return… You could have that too. If you wanted."

Virya says nothing for a long time. Rey can't tell if her silence is due to thoughtfulness, outrage, or just plain stubbornness. She wonders if Virya herself might not even know. But when the woman speaks again, her voice is it's normal, cool tone.

"You could protect me from him. Is that what you're suggesting?"

"Yes."

"You actually believe you're capable of that."

"I do."

"And what if I don't?"

"Then I can't make you," Rey shrugs, even though Virya can't see the gesture. "I can only ask you to try. We can help each other, Virya. We might be one of the only people left in the universe who can help each other now. So at least think about it. Alright?"

Virya stares at the wall. And Rey realizes there's nothing left to say. She's made her case. Now it's up to Virya to decide what to do with it. Rey lays the first aid kit on the foot of the bed. "There's arnica ointment in there," she says, turning for the door. "Not saying you'd need it, but hypothetically it would clear up a bruise pretty quick."

"He'd kill me."

Virya's voice, normally a song dipped in venom, is so low and soft that Rey doesn't recognize it at first. She halts, whirling, but Virya is still turned away, features veiled by her hair.

"No," Rey says. "He wouldn't. He wouldn't do that."

Virya turns, showing Rey her hard, dry eyes. They are red-rimmed but fierce, as if she were turning to face death itself and spit in its face.

Something jerks in Rey, like a chain fastened to her chest. _How?_ she wonders. How could Virya have pursued Kylo Ren, worshiped him even, when part of her believed he was capable of killing her out of anger?

And then just like that, the expression is gone, the moment passed, the window to a woman who lived inside all the Vorian's beauty and coldness is shuttered tight again. Rey stands on the other side, knowing this is one lock that won't just click open for her.

"Here," Virya says. She slides the notebook across the bed.

"What's this?"

"This is every motive I could think of for each family in the Inner Circle. If one of them is responsible for the murders, if one of them is trying to kill me, the reason will be in here."

"That's what you were writing this whole time?" Rey takes the notebook somewhat dumbly. After all that entreating, she'd never expected that Virya was already providing such a wealth of information for them. "Did Ben know you were doing this?"

"He asked me to, during his first visit. It's an analogue hard-copy so it can't be digitally compromised. It took a while for me to write and organize everything, but it's all there. A summary on each of the families on the first page, and then sections organized by household."

"I… thank you."

"I was going to give it to Lord Ren first thing in the morning. But I expect you'll see him before then."

Rey looks up, meeting Virya's eyes. Did she know that Rey and Ben were spending nights together? Or was this just a test to see if they were? Rey searches Virya's face but finds no hints. The First Order must have trained all its disciples in expressionless stoicism.

"If he has any questions about the contents, he can ask me tomorrow."

Rey nods, deciding to take the notebook and finally give Virya what she clearly wants: to be left alone.

When she reaches the door she looks back, but Virya is angled toward the wall again, her face turned away.

"Thank you," Rey says, finding that she means it.

"Stop thanking me. It makes my skin crawl."

**#**

_Excerpt from Virya Vorian's notes on the Inner Circle, Page 1__:_

_Doran Vorian was wealthiest among the Inner Circle families, thus was perceived by the others as biggest threat. Each curried Doran's favor in public while plotting against him in the dark, a not-so-secret activity that only worsened after the Supreme Leader's death._

_Only Rosshel sought a true alliance with the Vorians. Doran, however, viewed Rosshel as disposable entertainment. He enjoyed stringing Rosshel along with the idea of a partnership that he had no intention of ever entering. _

_Rosshel was disdained by the other families, who viewed him as a clinger-on to Doran. However, Rosshel's monopoly over ship tech and manufacturing, as well as his marriage to Talia_ _(formerly a Drakun) bought him a seat in the Inner Circle until his death. _

_Any of the remaining families could be behind the murders of Doran and Rosshel. What follows is a brief summary description of each: (1) Tannias, (2) Lannlas, (3) Drakun._

_Nearly everyone believes the Tannias family is led by it's golden son, Jae Tannias. But in reality, Jae is a puppet for his maternal grandmother, Lady Taeya._

_Last year, Taeya had a stroke that changed her from a cunning and careful woman to an erratic, paranoid, and violent mistress. Jae remains bound by his grandmother's emotional abuse and could go as far as committing these brash murders if she demanded it of him._

_Infighting among the Lannlas stretches as far back as the ancient line itself. In the last decade alone, there have been over a dozen parricides and enough suicides_ _(both suspect and genuine) to fill every page of this notebook. They are only equally prolific in procreation, thus providing an infinite supply of human sacrifice to their family's bloody name._

_Violence comes as naturally to the Lannlas family as their fire-red hair. While they are natural-born killers, I doubt they are sophisticated enough to orchestrate any organized schemes. They are too busy cutting each other's throats to plot against someone else's. They are the mad dogs of the Inner Circle and all dogs require a master. The one exception among them is their youngest, Mikael. The boy is only twelve, but he has an IQ higher than the rest of his family combined and a clear desire to rule. I'm convinced by my few interactions with him that Mikael Lannlas has the intelligence, patience, and ambition to take over the Inner Circle. _

_Evain and Ewyan Drakun are the darlings of their clan. The twin sisters have been inseparable since birth and their devotion for one another is rivaled only by their arrogant belief that the universe was created to serve them. The sisters believe it is their celestial destiny to rule. The girls have vowed to never let anything come between them, including marriage, and have slain every suitor their mother brought before them, before finally killing the woman herself. They have never shown a romantic interest in anyone outside of each other_ _(though I was once invited into their bed — an invitation I declined). This strength is also their greatest weakness — if you wish to harm one, simply dispose of the other._

_Secrets are key to surviving in the Inner Circle, where you're more likely to be stabbed in the back by an ally than in the chest by your foe. And while I've dedicated my life to learning the secrets of the other families for my father, there are undoubtedly more to discover. But the following pages hold all the motives I can think of, organized by family:_

**#**

"It's like reading a tragedy," Rey says, a bit numb as she finishes the introductory page for the fourth time. "I can't even read it objectively to look for a suspect. I just keep finding myself in disbelief that these people actually exist. They're all just so…"

"Messed up," Ben offers.

"To say the least."

Rey had crept back into Ben's room an hour ago. Rather than futilely trying for a few hours of sleep, she'd set up at the desk with the flashlight and Virya's notes. A few minutes in, Ben's voice had asked quietly from behind her, "What are you doing?"

She'd told him about her visit and showed him the notebook. She thought about telling him that Virya had clearly been crying before Rey got there. She thought about telling him that she'd seen something in Virya, just for an instant, something angry and afraid. But ultimately Rey decided to keep those things to herself. They weren't relevant to the mission. And Virya wouldn't want them shared, least of all with Ben.

Ben had sat up in bed and Rey had come to sit beside him so they could go through the notebook together. Rey had quickly been horrified by its contents. Ben had seemed unfazed.

"I mean based on this," Rey says, exasperated, "any one of them could be behind the murderers. Maybe even all of them working together."

Ben shakes his head. "Someone's the driving force. One of the only things these families have in common is that they cannot work together. Not without a Supreme Leader to make them fall in line."

"None of the thing's she's written in here surprise you?" Rey asks. "I mean, you don't seem very surprised."

Ben shrugs. "I lived in this world for a long time, Rey. It's where I thought I belonged."

That might be the most disturbing fact so far. Rey pinches the back half of the notebook and lets it fan a waterfall from under her thumb. Page after page of twisted secrets, outright manipulation, and cold-blooded betrayal flicker past in Virya's elegant script. Rey hates the idea of Ben living in that world.

"When I was on Jakku," she says softly, "I dreamed of having a family. But this…"

"Not all families are good," Ben says, "even ones with better intentions than these. Some families do nothing but hurt one another."

"No wonder Virya is the way she is. She grew up in this."

"She didn't just grow up in it. She embraced it. So did I."

"Wasn't it lonely? Not being able to trust anyone?"

"No," Ben says after a thoughtful pause. "Not at first. Actually, it was a relief. Trying and failing to live up to my family's name… that had been worse."

Rey looks at him, aghast.

Ben shrugs with a forced casualness. "The Light was… unforgiving. It illuminated the darkness in you and condemned it, demanding that you disown and destroy that part of yourself. Maybe that came easily to some, but I could never manage it. And I hated myself for it. Hated the Light.

But Darkness? Darkness was accepting. It embraced those flaws. Told you there was a place for them. Darkness confirmed what you yourself had always known, what your loved ones had always been secretly thinking — that you are impure. Flawed. That everyone is, it's just human nature. Even the Jedi Masters who claim to be so morally superior. Even they would hate, and kill, and betray, if they found a righteous reason to hide behind. A reason like exterminating Darkness, even if lived inside your own flesh and blood.

The only way to survive was to be strong enough to rely only on yourself. To not need anyone. It was safe that way. So, yes. In the darkness, I often felt alone. But in the light, I felt insufficient. I simply chose the lesser pain. And then before I knew it, pain was all I had become. And then, I saw you. I saw you and I didn't want to be alone. Couldn't be. It wasn't even an option anymore."

Rey swallows the knot tied up in her throat and wraps her arms around him, holding him close as she can. "And you won't be," she says. "Ever."


	32. A Quiet Moment

Their final dance lesson is short and uneventful.

Virya takes them through all the most popular waltzes and then three of the classics. When she and Ben demonstrate, Rey expects awkward tension. A tightness in expression. A fractional bit of space held between them. But there is nothing. They come together naturally as ever. And their dancing is just as beautiful. Rey wonders, not for the first time, how versed in the games of pretending the First Order made a person become.

They do one more dry run as a group and then it's over. The final preparations for the Frost Ball are done. Some of the Seamster's Helpers toddle in to shuttle Finn and Poe off for final wardrobe adjustments. The Seamstress himself comes for Rey. Her heart falls when the Helpers start setting up a corner of the room as a makeshift dressing area.

"But I thought I was done?" Rey asks, hating the idea of being nipped, prodded, and tugged for even a second more.

"Done!" The arachnid man chitters in what Rey thinks is his way of laughing. He loops her by a protracted arm and guides her to his equipment. "Perfection is a process. It is never 'done'."

He snaps eight pairs of fingers. The Helpers lift a beautiful, black cloud from their carrying case.

Rey has never been the kind of girl to 'get' dresses. She'd always disliked them from afar and absolutely detested them from up close. They weren't practical. They caught on things. And if you were pretending to be Virya Vorian, they often left huge swathes of skin unnecessarily exposed for the eyes of strangers to drink in.

Still, even Rey is rendered speechless by the Seamster's latest creation.

The gown is diaphanous black and encrusted with ebony gems. A spray of obsidian roses, black pearl dew drops, drifting petals fashioned from black star sapphires and black diamonds. The underlying fabric is a fine mesh, revealing the skin beneath and creating the illusion that the top of the gown vanishes into nothing.

"I… can't wear this," Rey says a little weakly. "This is too much."

"Too much what? Beauty and refinement for you to handle?" Rey turns to see Virya and Ben standing behind her, watching the production. Virya raises her perfect brows. "You can wear it and you will."

One of the Helpers is tugging on Rey's wrist, trying to free a loose end on her arm wrap. Rey doesn't even bother protesting. If there's one thing she's learned from her sessions with the Seamster, it's that he and his entourage don't even grasp the concept of "modesty".

"I have to work in it," Rey protests. "It'll get ruined. One of these flowers alone is worth more than anything than I've ever owned."

Virya rolls her eyes. "The paint on my _fingernail _is worth more than _everything_ you've ever owned, so that's hardly saying much."

Rey shoots the other woman a sharp look and is halfway to making an equally cutting retort when she realizes how familiar it feels. Virya is doing it again, just like a dance. She's leading everyone to treat her the same as they always have, playing it off as if last night had never happened. And she's doing such a good job of it that, for a moment, even the memory of it doesn't seem real.

"The dress will be fine if the fitting is done correctly," the Seamster assures. "You should be able to dance in it, run in it, maim and kill in it too."

The Helper at Rey's wrist finds a free edge and begins rapidly unraveling the fabric from Rey's forearms.

"Once we're done, it will hold up as well as a suit of armor. But we must do a final fitting to be sure."

"Alright," Rey relents, not seeing that she has much choice. She throws a pointed look over her shoulder at Ben and Virya. "If you two don't mind?"

Ben turns, reddening a little. Virya doesn't budge except for a deepening smirk.

"What? We're both women here. Unless you feel self conscious about something? Do let me know if you've changed your mind about that breast enhancement. It really is such a simple procedure."

"Virya," Ben nods to the far corner of the room. "A word?"

Virya's demeanor changes at once from catty to docile. "Of course, Lord Ren. After you."

Rey watches them walk toward the other side of the room. Ben diligently keeps his back turned to give Rey some privacy, so she can't mouth a silent thank you to him.

A wiry hand grasps her chin and pulls it round to face forward.

"Straight ahead," the Seamster instructs. "Now let me see that proud, Vorian posture."

Rey sighs, then tunes her body into the appropriate shapes. An arch in the small of her spine, a broadening of the chest, shoulders rolling back and collarbone spreading wide, as if attached to the ceiling by a string.

"Yes," the Seamster says, taking a lunging step back to admire her. "You've gotten much better at that. Walk please? No, no, no. Stop, stop, _stop_."

Rey stops like a puppet yanked on by the strings.

"That draping. It's entirely wrong there. Can we fix? _Now._" He snaps a finger and three Helpers scamper forward to fuss with the skirt.

Rey takes the opportunity to steal a glance back at the real Virya, standing in the far corner with Ben. They are having some quiet conversation, probably about the notebook. And the truth is, even just standing there, Virya's unconscious posture is more elegant and refined than anything Rey could ever imitate. All that poise and grace, just as perfect as her cool apathy and snide venom. Virya didn't just posses those traits, Rey realizes, she _wielded _them. They were her armor, her saber, and her shield. And behind all of that was something else, some_one else_. Rey had glimpsed that last night, not long enough to understand it, just long enough to be aware of it. The knowledge of it unsettles her, like a hook in her chest that twists lazy revolutions. A discomfort she cannot quite name.

"Studying the real specimen, are you?"

The Seamster's murmur, lower and nearer than she'd expected, almost makes her jump. Rey looks down to see that he has brushed aside the Helpers, deciding to handle the finishing touches himself. His many hands swing like disconnected machines, arranging and pinning her diaphanous skirt. His two largest eyes are fixed on her, all inky black pupil.

"Just observing while I can," Rey says casually.

"That's all well and good." He straightens to his full height, pretending to adjust the fabric over her left shoulder. "But if I were in your place, I wouldn't let her catch me dead with that look in my eyes."

Rey frowns. "What look?"

"Pity."

"I wasn't-" But as soon as he's named it, Rey knows that he is right.

"Ah, that's good." The Seamster says, keeping his voice casual but quiet. "She'd take it as an insult, you know. And besides, that sort of sentiment would be wasted on her."

"How do you mean?" Rey asks.

"I've known Virya since she was a child. From a sweet little infant to a cunning heiress. If there's one thing that's never changed, it's this: Virya Vorian always gets what she wants."

His hands stop moving then. He holds Rey's gaze. It is the first time Rey has ever seen all eight of the Seamster's eyes focused on the same thing. His many fingers tighten on the fabric of her dress, reminding her of the deadly webs that real spiders spun in the wrecks of the Jakku desert.

And then, before she can process the arachnid's expression, it's gone.

"So," the Seamster says loudly, stepping back and clapping his primary hands. "The dress is done. We'll just get the wig and makeup on you and then-"

"Wait."

Rey and the Seamster both turn toward Ben. He's never interrupted a fitting, so Rey expects him to point out something wrong with the dress from the back or some seam that needs adjusting. But he doesn't say anything like that. He doesn't say anything at all. He's just looking at her.

His eyes makes her think of the ship, and how his hands had felt skimming her jaw. She's learned by now that when Ben smiles, it starts in his eyes and not from his mouth. And he is smiling at her now, although no one else might see it.

_I want you to look like you._

Rey starts to smile too, knowing what he is thinking. Then she remembers Virya, standing right beside Ben, looking at him as he looks at Rey. Her pretty face is full of bitterness. Pain. Suddenly it is the Seamster's voice swimming in Rey's mind.

_Virya Vorian always gets what she wants. _

_I can believe that_, Rey thinks, looking at the hardness in Virya's eyes. _I just wish I knew what that was._

**#**

Rey showers off in Ben's dorm, then leaves the water running for him as she sits cross legged on the bed, toweling her hair and going over Virya's notebook on last time.

By the desk, D-O rocks contentedly on his single wheel. Rey hadn't expected Ben to let the droid in with them. But he'd treated it as casually as an every day occurrence.

Now as Rey sits on the bed, she tries not to be distracted by the wounds of water slapping against tile in the next room over. Only it _is_ distracting. Not just because _Ben is showering _in the next room over, but because it's the kind of thing Rey had always pretended to be hearing when there had been no one in her life. Like the quiet sounds of him dressing in the morning when he's trying not to wake her. Or the residual heat of his body in the sheets after he's left. Or the gentle turning of pages beside her as they read together in bed.

These, the quiet noises of a shared life, are still so strange and novel to her. She's embarrassed to admit how much she loves them. Embarrassed how truly, she wishes to never _not _be distracted by them.

When the water stops, she's almost sorry about it.

Then the bathroom door slides open and Ben is nearly filling the entire frame, a long sleeve thrown over his fatigues. The smell of soap floods the small room.

"I'm going to see if there's anything left in the mess hall," he says. "Get you something?"

Rey shakes her head. "Want me to come though?"

"You're already in your casuals," he nods to her sweatpants and tank top. "I can bring you something."

"I'm not that hungry. Maybe some hot tea if they have any?"

The corner of his mouth turns down.

"What?"

"You've been skipping too many meals lately. You should at least try to eat something." Then he adds a slightly awkward, "Please."

Rey sighs. "Alright. Bring back something light and I'll eat it. Since you asked nicely."

"Thank you."

And next thing she knows, Ben's crossed the room and is leaning over the bed, knuckles planted on the mattress to either side of her hips. He presses a quick, soft kiss to her mouth.

"I've been wanting to do that since I saw you in that dress."

Rey blinks, caught off guard.

"Back soon." He smiles and then he's gone.

Rey sits alone in her surprise. After a lost moment, she turns back to the notebook, telling herself it was just a quick kiss. A peck. Barely anything really, compared to others they'd already shared. Yet somehow she cannot stop herself grinning like a fool.

D-O notices, coming over to whir excitedly at the foot of the bed.

"Oh, shut up," Rey says. But she's still fighting to master the expression a few minutes later when she hears knock on the door.

_Must have his hands full,_ she thinks, hopping up from bed and giving in to the fact that she's going to open the door to him with a huge grin on her face like an idiot.

"That was fast," she says as the door slides open.

And if all her attempts at self-respecting discipline had only half managed to conceal her giddiness, the sight of Finn on the other side of Ben's door certainly finishes the job.

"Finn," Rey blinks. "I didn't… What are…?" she lets the sentences die, knowing there's no way to salvage this. Because Finn isn't even reacting to the sight of her in Ben's door frame. He's just taking it in. Her casual sweatpants and tank top, her damp hair and the smell of soap.

"Ben isn't here," she says quietly.

She expects him to lose it but instead he just stares at her.

"Um. Finn?"

"I tried your door first," he says. "When you didn't answer, I started to leave. But then I thought what if…" He sighs, taking his turn to let a sentence die. "Can we talk?" he nods down the corridor.

Rey's stomach drops. "Yeah. Of course."

She grabs her jacket and asks D-O to tell Ben she'll be right back, feeling Finn's eyes in her back the entire time. Then she follows him down the hall.

**#**

They don't go far, just a five minute walk. They use their rank to open a small rec room that's meant to be closed off in the evenings. The far wall is a big glass window that normally offers a view of the depths of space. Now it only showcases the barren, moonlit tundra on the other side of the glass.

They stop in front of a vending machine and get steaming cups of watery coffee. Then Rey follows Finn over to the window and waits for him to speak.

Except he doesn't. And the silence stretches out until Rey can't stand it anymore.

_Handle your Finn-thing._ That's what Poe had told her. And she had countered, had _hoped_ _desperately _more like_,_ that there wasn't anything to handle. And now here they were. Finn being terrifyingly quiet, and Rey feeling like an awful friend.

"Look, Finn," Rey blurts, just wanting to get it out there. "I want to be straight with you. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't understand. But I've kind of been involved with-"

"I know you're in love with him."

Rey nearly spills her coffee. "Um," she fumbles with the paper cup, the overflow scalding her fingertips. _That's not what I was going to say_, she starts to tell him. _I mean, we haven't even talked about —_

"You do?"

Finn's shoulders sag. "Yeah," he says, still staring out the window. "I think I've known for a long time."

"Oh."

"You know I'm only trying to protect you, right?" Finn says. "And yes, I know you're strong and you usually don't need protecting. Believe me, if it were anything else, any _one _else, I'd know you could handle it but… he's different. He could hurt you, you know. Break your heart, if you let him."

_You don't know him, _she wants to say. _He's changed_. But she knows that those defensive tactics are only that. A defense. The truth is much more frightening.

"I know," she says. "That's… kind of how it's supposed to be, though. Right? Otherwise what's the point?"

Finn's jaw flexes. He takes a deep breath. "We could all die at this Ball tomorrow. If you're the real target for the assassinations, we'll be fighting for our lives even if our cover isn't blown."

Rey nods. "If you're having second thoughts, no one's making you-"

"I'm going," Finn says firmly. "So don't even start with that. But before we dive into this thing, I want to tell you something."

Rey steels herself. As much as she wants to ask Finn not to go there, as much as she wants to find some reason to end this conversation and walk the other away, she knows she owes it to him to listen.

"Thank you."

Rey blinks. "Thank you? For what?"

"For helping me find my way to the Light again. I thought about what Ben said at the last meeting. I know the reason you're both training me is because I was straying down a dark path. The first time I realized it, I didn't even _want_ to find my way back again. Didn't see anything wrong where I was going. But you two helped me change that. Both of you."

Rey stands speechless. This was the last thing she'd been expecting.

"I used to think the two of you together didn't make any sense," Finn admits. "But I was wrong. I mean, as your friend I'm still worried about you. And I'll always be watching your back. But as someone with a connection to the Force… I see now that there is something about the two of you together. Something that's stronger than either of you apart. Something I should have never tried to come between. It wasn't my place. I'm sorry. I'm not even saying I know it will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing in the end but… well, it saved me anyhow. So, I'll stand by it. You and him. Together."

Rey swallows. There's a hot coal in her throat and wet heat in her eyes. "Thank you," she says softly. "That means a lot."

Finn smiles. The emotion doesn't fully reach his eyes. But he's trying.

"Yeah, well. It was kind of now or never." He tries to laugh and fails. He looks at her, as if to check whether she noticed. Very gently, he touches his fingertips to the back of her wrist. "You know I love you, right?"

Rey nods. "Yeah. I know."

And Finn's smile is a little more real. Then he heaves a big sigh, breaking the touch to cup his coffee in both his hands. "So what do you think?" he says with forced casualness. "Is Poe going to keep a low profile tomorrow or will he try to sweet talk every noblewoman he meets?"

Rey smiles thinly. "We both know the answer to that."

Finn laughs loudly, shaking his head. "Yeah," he says, sipping his coffee. "Good old Poe."

They exchange small jokes after that, trying to find their way back to normal. And it isn't. Not yet. But it's enough for Rey to believe that normal is something they can get back to eventually.

After a few more minutes of talking, Finn walks her back to Ben's room. Rey elbows him in the ribs as they come up to the door. "You know," she says. "if you really wanted to prove you meant it, you would tell him what you told me."

Finn gives her a look like she's crazy.

"Not the last part," Rey says quickly. "The other thing. I mean you said yourself he's half of the _thing_ that helped you find yourself. I know he'd like to hear it from you too."

Finn runs a hand over his mouth and groans. "If we get through the Ball I'll think about it. Until then, baby steps."

Rey grins, halting as they reach Ben's door. D-O sits outside it, sleeping.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Finn says.

"Yeah. See you."

Finn nods, steps away from her, and walks on his own down the hall.

**#**

Ben looks up as she enters the room, his long legs crossed on the bed and the notebook open in his lap. On the nightstand is a cup of tea and a plate of crackers.

"Hi," Rey says, shrugging off her jacket and stepping out of her boots.

"Hi," Ben says, sitting up a little straighter. "They only had crackers. Sorry."

"Crackers are perfect," Rey sits on the edge of the bed and pops a slightly stale cracker in her mouth.

"And the tea's cold," he adds.

Rey reaches across and makes a point of taking a big gulp. "I love a cold tea."

Ben smirks and goes back to the book. They fall into a comfortable silence.

Rey eats her crackers and watches him read. And It feels normal. It feels right.

It seems impossible that the Frost Ball is tomorrow. And Rey realizes for the first time how badly she wants to survive it. Not because the fate of the universe depended on it, but because she wants to get to the other side and have more moments like this. Not epic power struggles, not desperate life-or-death fights. Just quiet, precious moments with Ben.

"Aren't you going to ask me where I've been?" she says, swallowing the last of her meal.

"Do you need to tell me?" Ben asks, turning a page.

"No, I don't need to," Rey says, after a moment's consideration. "I just thought you'd want to know. Given you've clearly been waiting for me."

She means it as a good natured tease but when Ben looks up from the notebook there is complete seriousness in his eyes. "Rey," he pushes the book from his lap and draws her into it instead. "Since the moment I met you, that's all I've ever done."


	33. Frost Ball

**A/N:** _Dear readers. I'm sorry for the late upload today - for those that missed the Twitter updates, I fell behind this week for many reasons (mostly: I got sick). _ _In truth, I don't want to post this chapter. I know it isn't as good as it could be. In 2019, I would've kept it to myself until was happy with it and apologized to you all for the wait._ _But my New Year's Resolution was to prioritize showing up instead of showing up perfect (which has been a real test in 2020, I'll tell you that). Ultimately, I decided to not let down my readers who check here every week and post this, even though I'm not satisfied with it. I apologize if the quality is not up to it's usual stuff. Just know I'm working hard to make sure the rest of these chapters are up to my personal standards. _

They take different ships to Frost Ball, and even go so far as to leave at different times. That way, the three ships can approach the ball from completely different locations in the galaxy, each unknown to the other. Poe heads out at daybreak. Finn and Rose take off at midday. Rey and Ben watch the ships leave from the docks, their own departure not scheduled until the early afternoon. Rey doesn't like all the secrecy. She feels under-equipped to do her job and protect her friends.

"Except your job isn't to protect us," Finn reminds as he climbs into the cockpit. "This time it's our job to protect you."

He looks past her then to share a look with Ben. It is a brief and silent exchange, but Rey feels something pass between them. She is about to ask what when the Seamster sidles up to install his nano radios into Finn and Rose's ears. The neurally activated devices are implanted deep inside the ear canal and will be the only thing connecting the four of them once they get to the ball.

Poe had made an awful face when his was put in. Rose winces. Finn visibly fights a flinch.

"Remember you need to concentrate for three full seconds to use it," the Seamster reminds them. "And they only work in a quarter mile radius of each other. Anything stronger could be detected by the other side."

Finn and Rose both nod and, once the Seamster has retreated to a safe distance, their ship takes off. Finn doesn't even look back at Rey before he goes.

_There won't be anyone to see us off,_ Rey thinks as she watches the ship shrink into the galaxy.

But she's wrong. When she and Ben prepare for takeoff a few hours later, Leia and Virya come out onto the docks.

"Be careful," Leia says. "May the Force be with you. Both of you."

The Seamster installs Ben's nano radio inside his helmet, another black mask tinted to hide his face from the First Order. Then he skitters over to the passenger side and installs Rey's. It feels like an insect biting into her brain. Once Rey blinks through the watering in her eyes, she sees Virya standing next to the ship. Rey expects her to lean across Rey's lap and say something suitably fawning to Ben. Instead, those dark eyes lock onto Rey's own.

"Remember what I wrote in the book. If there's an answer to your questions, it's somewhere in there."

Before Rey can ask Virya what she means, she steps back to stand alongside Leia.

"We have to go now," Ben says, firing up the thrusters, and then they're off.

**#**

The Frost Ball is held on a small planet, perpetually in the shadows of a distant sun. It's sky has only ever known the bright winter night, illuminated by two full moons that never wane. It's clouds, when they do crowd the horizon, are fat and silvery with snow.

Rey and Ben plunge through such clouds when they arrive, a shadow cutting through the lazy storm. All around them, other ships plummet like dark comets, all descending toward a single destination. It takes Rey several moments to take in the sight before her. Ben flies over a wide canyon, a glacial crevasse seamed with some mineral that glows gold beneath the ice. It casts an ethereal glow, making the falling snow all the more beautiful, both frozen feathery soft and warm with golden light. Rey has never seen anything like it.

At the top of the canyon is a palace. Except it is unlike any palace Rey has ever read about or seen in pictures. Three domes of glass and stone have been carved out of the cliff itself, massive as any mountain. The same glowing crystal illuminating the crevasse also veins the palace walls, polished to shine even through the blizzard. At the palace's base, three wide arches frame separate waterfalls. The water catches golden on the way down, creating the illusion of bright, liquid light pouring down the rock face. The ships are flying into those arches, like birds flocking back into their caves.

"You're staring."

Rey blinks. "Of course I'm staring. Have you seen this palace?"

"Many times," Ben guides them into the central arch. The golden water roars beneath them, casting a soft glow in the ship's hull. "And so has Virya."

Oh. Right. Rey contains herself, schooling her expression into haughty disinterest. Virya attends the Frost Ball every year. She wouldn't arrive wide eyed and wondrous.

Ben parks in an indoor hangar with vaulted ceiling. A series of stone bridges lead over the indoor rivers, which have been channeled to cut through the floor itself. On the far wall, a bank of glass and steel elevators bring guests up to the main event.

A valet is striding toward them, reaching for Rey's door, but Ben is already out and walking around, backing the valet down with his larger frame.

"Park it somewhere easy to find," he says, the device in his mask distorting his voice.

The valet takes the key and scurries over to the driver's side.

Ben opens Rey's door himself.

She steps out, taking Ben's arm. Ostensibly for decorum, but also because he already knows his way and it's easier not to be distracted by her surroundings when he is guiding her through them.

They cross the nearest bridge, then wind their way through a lush garden with white roses and moon flowers. The other guests openly stare at them. Whether it's be because she is Virya Vorian, or Ben's identity is still unknown, or the Seamster's dress is simply just that beautiful, there's no way to know. Perhaps, as Bindu had suggested, they all suspect that _she_ is behind the murders.

They step into a private elevator. The floor rushes out from under them. They rocket up into the blizzarding sky itself, the crystal dome ceiling barely noticeable. The elevator capsule rotates, spinning the view to a ballroom floor. A ring of marble, the same crystal ceiling, its arches lined with twinkling lights and garlands of balsam fir. The room is filled with beautiful people in beautiful clothes, drifting about like the snowflakes drift on the wind outside. Elegant music emanates from a band playing instruments of gold. And when the elevator door slides open, Rey smells a crisp, woody scent that she's never known before.

They step out onto the top of the stairs. A man in a crisp suit scurries to announce them. His voice echoes to the guests below.

"The Lady Virya Vorian and her betrothed, Sir…" he pauses, glancing expectantly to Ben. Ben only stares back like a silent menace. The announcer clears his throat. "And… her, ah, betrothed. Welcome to the Frost Ball."

**#**

Rey doesn't even know where to begin. Luckily, she doesn't have to. They aren't there five minutes before someone approaches them. A tall man with scarlet hair pulled into a bun, the sides buzzed close. His suit looks more like something to be worn into battle than into a ball. Between him and Ben, it's hard to say whose more prepared for a fight.

"Well, well, _well_, well, well," the man says loudly, making his way over from one of the many bars.

"Lynus Lannlas," Ben mutters, disdain clear on his voice. "Always drunk. Never worth your time. Don't engage. He'll get bored and move on."

That's about all he has time to say before the barrel chested man is standing right in front of them, smelling thickly of mead, cheeks as red as his hair, and his small eyes raking all over Rey's figure. "If it isn't Lady Death herself."

Rey does her best imitation of thinly veiled disgust. It isn't much of a reach.

"Didn't know if you'd show," Lynus says, loud enough for everyone within a ten foot radius to hear. "But it looks like there might be something to look forward to in this shitty, borefest after all. Tell me, which one of us do you plan on blowing up first, eh? If it's not me, can I help?" He grins in a way that's more like a leer.

"Trust me, Lynus," Rey says, "if I had any plans for excitement, you'd be the last person on my list to include."

"Rude bitch, as always," Lynus says, almost affectionately. "Suppose I should've said I sorry and all. I heard your family cacked. Or maybe I should be congratulating you? What do you prefer? It's always best to keep that sort of mess in the family anyway. Coming around to the Lannlas way of doing things, eh?"

The Vorians aren't Rey's real family. By all accounts, she wouldn't have liked them much if she'd had the chance to meet them. Still, it's all she can do to keep her fists from clenching. A million responses crowd her tongue, none of them cool or composed enough to pass as something Virya might say.

Lynus seems to notice Ben for the first time and starts questioning him about his armor. Ben remains silent, refusing to answer any questions.

Rey is just thinking that she might need to find a way to get rid of this boorish brute, regardless of Ben's advice, when she accidentally locks eyes with a young man across the room. He sees her and immediately starts heading over, politely shedding a halo of gorgeous women in the process. He has jet black hair, a lean but muscular build and fluid grace, perfect skin and almond eyes that are a strikingly deep gold. When he smiles at her, it is both boyish and manly at once.

"Virya," he says, so warmly that as he takes her hand and kisses it, Rey doesn't even blink. "Is this man bothering you?"

Ben's attention snaps instantly from Lynus to this newcomer, who smells like a grove of orange blossoms in a deep forest.

Rey smiles thinly, deciding to embrace the company of this relatively polite devil over the first. "Is it so obvious?" she asks, letting her sarcasm drip through.

"This man?" Lynus echoes, going even redder. "Listen here you little turd, I was smashing skulls before you father was smashing his pathetic scrotum into your bitch mother. If you think you can-"

"Uncle," a soft voice cuts through Lynus' tirade. The red haired man goes rigid, turning to look behind him. A boy no more than twelve, dressed in sharply tailored suit, leans on a column like an adult might. Aside from his fire red hair, buzzed on the sides, there is hardly any resemblance between him and the man he called "uncle".

"I thought we discussed you making a fool of yourself in front of pretty women."

Lynus goes impossibly redder. "Mikael," he growls. "You know how I dislike being interrupted."

The boy shrugs. "I'm only looking out for you, Uncle. I thought you'd want to know that Aunt Sabitha is threatening to slit Aunt Alyssa's throat again. In case you're interested in watching."

"That hair-brained wench!" Lynus brightens. "I _told _her not to leave me out of the fun this time." The burly man lumbers off in the direction his nephew had indicated, seemingly forgetting about Virya Vorian and the Tannias man altogether.

The child straightens off the pillar and, after shoving his hands down his pockets and throwing an over-the-shoulder look that says _you're welcome _at Rey, follows his distracted relative.

"That boy is going to be a problem one day," the golden eyed man says, watching them leave. "I can't remember the last time a Lannlas was born with the ability to reason."

"As long as he uses it to control his relatives," Rey says. "He's a problem I'll happy to deal with at a later time."

The golden eyed man nods before turning his attention to her. "Now," he says, "how are you?"

"I'm well enough," Rey relies, re-calibrating to deal with this new stranger, who Ben is still staring at with fixed intensity. "All things considered."

"My grandmother doubted you'd be here. I told her not to count you out so soon."

_Mentioning his grandmother in the first breath,_ Rey thinks. She'd bet her light saber this was Jae. In a way that was a relief. Of all Virya's peers, Jae was the only one who seemed more a political puppet than a leader in his own right. If she was going to start the night by 'practicing' with anyone, he would have been her first pick.

"I'm sure you're tired of false condolences. But unlike others, mine are sincere." Jae looks at her with his serious, golden eyes. "You and I always were the only ones who understood the true weight of family loyalty."

At Rey's side, Ben radiates silent promises of violence. Jae seems to notice just in time to avoid having his neck broken.

"My apologies, you must be Virya's betrothed. Jae Tannias. Forgive me if we've met. The mask makes it a bit difficult to tell."

"We haven't," Ben says.

There is a brief, uncomfortable pause. But rather than responding with the arrogant offense that Rosshel might have, Jae Tannias simply angles his head thoughtfully. "I see."

"Oh, don't mind him," Rey waves dismissively. "He isn't much for socializing. I drag him to these events."

"I highly doubt you'd have to drag any man anywhere, Virya."

Rey blinks. Had he just… very politely hit on her?

Just then the music comes to a halt. The announcer declares from the top of the staircase that the dancing is about to begin. Jae turns to Ben, his manners perfectly intact despite the other man's abruptness. "If the lady does not object, might I have the first dance? It's something of a tradition between us."

Before Ben can say a flat out no, Rey puts a quieting hand on his shoulder. She'll have to start working this ball at some point. She'd rather start sooner than later.

"The lady does not object," she says, and descends onto the dance floor with Jae before Ben can stop her.


	34. An Open Invitation

"I like him," Jae says, as if Ben weren't glaring daggers into his back. "He's your type."

Rey lifts her skirts in one hand and clasps Jae's in the other as they join the other couples. From up close, she sees that the dance floor has been engineered to look like a frozen lake. Beneath it, the rivers of light glow softly.

"My type?" She asks nodding to a Lord who goes out of his way to bow to her.

"You know. Tall. Dark. Quiet in a murderous kind of way. With a different mask, he could be another Kylo."

Rey laughs, hoping Jae doesn't see the emotion hidden beneath it. They take their places among the other dancers. Rey curtsies with the women, the ballroom fanning with pools of silk and lace.

"There will never be another Lord Ren. I know that as well as anyone, Jae."

"Of course." Jae bows with the rest of the men. "At least, not if we have any say in it."

He gives her that smile again, the one that's boyish and manly at once. Rey can feel Ben's eyes boring into them from the bar. It takes some restraint not to turn around and mouth to him, '_Stop it' ._

The orchestra begins. Rey recognizes the introductory notes and sends a silent thanks to Virya for drilling them on the classics. The ancient piece, _Un Capitano Moro, _tells the tragedy of a husband and wife, at first hopelessly in love, who are subsumed by suspicion and jealousy. Rey knows the piece by heart. It starts out whimsical and soft, then creeps into sultry and ominous by the second movement. By third, the music turns dark and dramatic, signifying the husband's descent into violent madness. The choreography demands a series of dips for the woman, meant to illustrate the wife's increasing vulnerability and despair. The deepest and most technical is at the end, when the husband gives in to madness and murders the woman he loves.

Jae places a polite touch on her waist. Rey thinks again that she is grateful to be sharing this first dance with him and not with the Lannlas brute who had first approached. She'd barely been comfortable practicing this waltz on base ship with her friends.

As it turns out, Jae's dancing is as impeccable as his manners. Rey had expected to feel awkward in the arms of a complete stranger, but something about his decorous demeanor puts her at ease. He leads her gracefully between the other couples. As the tempo picks up, her body moves naturally after his, as if she'd already danced with Jae Tannias a hundred times. He watches her movements with intelligent golden eyes.

"You seem… different tonight." He lowers her into the first shallow dip.

Rey's gut lurches. "Different? How?"

"Somehow," Jae says. "I'm not sure."

He swings her. Rey lets her head fall back, in part because the dance demands it. But also to hide her face. When Jae pulls her back up, she comes in closer than necessary. A cello creeps into the low notes of the song, trapping the dancers in a momentary embrace. Rey takes the opportunity to compose her expression.

"Well," she says softly, " it has been a rather long few months."

The cello fades to the higher strings. They resume waltzing. Jae's expression softens everywhere except for the eyes, a darker gold than the rivers flowing beneath their feet.

"Of course," he says apologetically, leading her seamlessly into a spin. His footwork is flawless and easy to match. But Rey wonders if he can detect the differences between her dancing and the real Virya.

"How is Lady Taeya?" she asks, turning the conversation to him. Based on Virya's notebook, Jae's grandmother would be the closest topic to his heart and something only Virya would know the details of. By now, Rey has read the notebook so many times, she can actually see Virya's handwriting in her memory of the page:

_Nearly everyone believes the Tannias family is led by it's golden son, Jae Tannias. But in reality, Jae is a mere, emotionally-battered puppet of his maternal grandmother, Lady Taeya. _

Jae falters a moment before answering. "My grandmother is… much the same. Unchanged since the last time we spoke."

_Last year, Taeya had a stroke that changed her from a cunning and careful woman to an erratic, paranoid, and violent mistress. Jae remains bound by his grandmother's emotional abuse and could go as far as committing these brash murders if she demanded it of him._

"Still demanding?" Rey asks, low enough for only Jae to hear beneath the music.

"As ever," Jae breathes. "But what are we if not servants to the demands of our progenitors? Our very existence is a debt to them, after all."

There's a bit of something in Jae's smile that seems forced. A weariness beneath the surface. It reminds Rey of the bitterness the real Virya often hid beneath hers. She thinks of her own grandparent and what demands he'd had for her. She thinks of Ben, fracturing under the weight of the Skywalker legacy. A legacy which he would never escape now, so long as he stayed by her side.

Jae lowers Rey into a dip. The music descends with her into minor scales. For a frozen moment, Rey's neck lays open and vulnerable. Then Jae pulls her up again.

"Be that as it may," she squeezes his shoulder lightly. "We are all entitled to some portion of our own life. You know I've always thought Lady Taeya was lucky to have you as a grandson. Luckier than she realizes."

Jae's expression hardens, as if his face were the frozen dance floor, icing over the hidden currents below. He leads her into the third movement without further conversation, all silent and reserved. Rey's heart thuds, hoping she hasn't overstepped. Or worse, given herself away.

Jae dips her, the lowest she's gone so far, and this time it is he who pulls her close into the recovering embrace. "Thank you," he whispers, as if it costs him something to say it.

Rey blinks at the emotion. Before she can respond, the dance spins her out, arms extended. When she comes back to him, Jae's face is clear and pleasant again. "She was asking after you, you know. Grandmother."

"You mentioned," Rey says. "She thought I wouldn't be here."

"More than that." Jae twirls her. The Seamster's creation spreads like a galaxy around Rey's waist. "She thought you _shouldn't_. And she told me that if you did, we ought not to invite you to the meeting tonight. But I disagreed. I still do. You deserve to be there. You're Vorian after all."

Rey nearly breaks choreography to jerk around and look at Jae. She remembers herself but just barely, keeping to the steps of the dance, which is nearing it's end. She twirls rapidly away from Jae, the wife's desperate attempt to flee her husband.

His fingers tighten on hers, a cue to spin back, into his chest and then into his arms, entrusting him with her full weight. She falls and Jae catches her, leaning her back until the blonde wig brushes the floor.

Jae breaks form then, bending down low to whisper into her ear, enveloping her in the scent of orange blossoms. "The families are meeting in the tower at midnight. Come alone, without your fiance. There are some who don't even want to accept you there, let alone a masked stranger."

And, along with Jae's whisper, the music dies.

**#**

Jae escorts Rey back to the edge of the dance floor. "I'd ask for another. But I think your betrothed is inventing new ways to murder me as we speak."

Rey glances up the steps. Ben stands rigidly at the top like impending doom incarnated.

"I'd tell you to never mind him," Rey says, slipping her arm free. "But I don't think those poor girls could take the heartbreak."

Rey nods at a flock of gorgeous women, all glaring daggers at Jae and Virya but none having the nerve to step up and give voice to the outrage in their eyes. Jae sighs. "Alas," he lifts Rey's knuckles to his lips. "I'll see you later? The time and place we discussed?" He shoots her a meaningful look. She can see why he has so many admirers.

Rey squeezes his hand lightly, playing along with the suggestion of trust between them. "Count on it."

And then with a golden smile, Jae Tannias kisses her hand and is gone.

Ben waits for her like a pillar of shadow at the tops of the steps. If someone struck a match against him, she'd half expect it to burst into flame.

"Enjoying yourself?" He asks as she reaches him.

"Playing my part," Rey accepts a drink from a passing waiter, not champagne but something to do with her hands. "More than I can say for you. It was productive, in case you care."

"I do," he says tightly. "From up here, it looked a little too productive."

Rey shoots a dry look at him over the rim of her glass before taking a gulp. Fire shoots her throat. Acrid fumes fill her lungs. Her tongue stings like it's been subject to a chemical burn. Rey slaps a hand over her mouth to keep from hacking, her eyes watering nonetheless.

Ben snatches the glass from her and drops it unfinished on another passing tray.

"What in the Force…" Rey wheezes, stepping close to hide her definitively inelegant reaction in his broad chest. "Did I just drink paint thinner?"

"Whisky."

"It tastes like _poison._"

"You get used to it."

Not if she could help it.

She is about to say so when a set of dark, feminine hands patched with white wrap around Ben's rib cage from behind. Rey blinks for an uncomprehending moment as the fingers, ringed with black and white diamonds, rake lightly into Ben's frame.

"Oh, Virya," a voice purrs. "He's beautiful."

Rey jerks back to see a woman standing behind Ben, her cheek pressed appreciatively into his bicep. Her fingers dig into the ridges of his armor. She has one dark eye and one bright. Her skin is a patchwork of the ebony and cream. Her striking features are at once unnerving and beautiful.

"I can feel it. He is."

An identical face appears to Ben's left, disorienting Rey further.

Then the faces step around to reveal separate bodies, two identical girls taking either of Ben's arms. Ben goes perfectly still beneath their touch, as if any sudden movement might cause them to bite.

"Shy though," one of the girls _tsks_, tracking a fingertip up his chest. "That's a shame."

"What did you expect from a man in a mask?" The other girl traces the jawline of Ben's mask. Ben tilts his head away and out of her reach.

"We could fix that shyness for you, Virya. If you lent him to us for a bit. A few hours would do, don't you think, Evain?"

"Oh at least, Ewyan. Maybe a whole night would show better results."

Rey smiles even though what she wants to do is shove both girls roughly to the ground.

"Oh, is that jealousy, Virya? How rare for you."

"There's no need for that, darling. You know you can always join. Yours is an open invitation."

Rey's smile curls feral at the edges. "I might consider it. If I thought for a moment you could afford even half the rate."

The girls drop their marbled hands from Ben like hot stones. He steps over to Rey's side, so they stand face to face with the sisters. Rey resists the urge to wrap her arm around him and pull him fully out of their reach. But she knows Virya would never let them get under her skin.

The twins however, wrap their own lean arms around each other, smiling with false warmth.

"Did you hear that, Evain? Virya would charge us. And here I thought we were her friends."

"She's a Vorian, Ewyan. They have no friends but their money, and think they can take it with them to the grave."

The word _grave _in Evain's full mouth more like a promise than a turn of phrase. Rey wonders briefly if these girls aren't behind the murders. They certainly seem depraved enough to relish in it.

"Well I heard a little rumor," Ewain says conversationally, "That our pretty little Virya is in over her head. And she may not even realize it yet. Poor thing."

Evain smiles cruelly.

Standing there, within striking distance, the sisters remind Rey of identical desert vipers, curling lazy serpentines around their cornered prey. Rey can't keep her eyes on both of them at once, so she doesn't try. She keeps her head held high, doing her best to seem unaffected by their sinister beauty. Still, she can't quiet fight the numbness crawling up her limbs. It is as if their mismatched gazes were turning her to stone.

"She'll find out by tonight though, one way or the other."

"Now, that _will _be fun."

"Care to clarify?" Ben interrupts, his tone the pinnacle of cold disinterest. "Or is it entertaining for you to make indirect threats at my fiance?"

"Oh," Ewyan tips her head. "He speaks."

"Are they threats, lover boy?" Evain purrs. "Or are they warnings? Who are you to decide?"

"Who is a man in a mask to criticize to _us _for being indirect? We leave _everything_ out in the open," Ewyan purrs suggestively.

From the orchestra pit, the band cues for a new song. Rey vaguely recognizes the notes and, in the same moment, Ben's arm wraps around her waist.

"If you're done," he says, "my fiance owes me a dance."

Then Ben tows Rey to the dance floor.


	35. Promises, Promises

She's danced with Ben before, dozens of times. Just never with an audience. Never with the stakes quite so high.

The weight of those stakes is made heavier by the memory of Virya and Ben, who sweep before Rey's eyes like specters as she step down onto the ballroom floor. The two of them dance together in all their regal, untouchable grace. Despite hours of practice, Rey had never caught up to that. Even given a lifetime, she still wouldn't. Rey knows what she is. A fighter, a scavenger, a tinkerer and a pilot. She knows fuselages and haggling. With training, she had become a Jedi connected to the Force.

But she wasn't a Vorian, and no training in the universe could make her into one. Rey would never be as stunning beside Ben as Virya had been beside Kylo. That was just a fact. She hadn't let it bother her much before. After all, she and Ben shared other things, more important things, that Virya could never touch. But here at the Frost Ball, she felt suddenly nervous and insufficient.

Would the other guests notice? Would they be able to tell, just by watching, that she was a fraud? True, no one knew that the mystery man was actually their dead Supreme Leader, risen from the grave to bring everything down on their heads. But even the sight of Virya with a new fiance would prompt the comparison. As the guests watched more closely, comparing the two couples, wouldn't they notice the one lacking was not the masked man, but Virya herself?

The violins warm up. Rey's guts flex and tauten with the strings, tuning her nerves.

She looks to Ben, the only person who might know what she is feeling. But instead of his face, Rey sees Virya reflected in his visor. She looks away from the other woman's reflection, further unsettled. Annoyed with herself for even needing to seek reassurance.

_Snap out of it,_ she scolds. _You weren't this nervous with Jae. _

But that was because Rey had never seen Virya and Jae dancing together. She didn't have a mental image to compare against her own deficiencies. And because she'd been able to distract herself with work.

The orchestra plays the opening notes of the dance. Ben bows. Rey curtsies. Then Ben's hand lands on her waist. His touch is like an anchor, pulling her from the dark storm of her thoughts. Bringing her back to herself. He frames her in his long arms and broad chest. It is the most familiar place she's been all night.

"Nervous?" he murmurs.

"A little."

"This isn't your first time, though."

"No," Rey says, deflecting. "I've been nervous many times."

The waltz begins. She recognizes it. It's one that involves the starting partners to separate and spin in overlapping circles with the other dancers before coming back together again. It was more about timing than technical skill, a dance that required you to not only to be in sync with your own partner, but with all the others couples as well. The first three times Virya had tried to teach it to them, she, Finn, and Rose had all collided like pin balls. It had taken days of Virya verbally cutting them up to get it just right.

But for the first few movements, it is just Ben and Rey. Rey who is not Virya and never will be. But she won't let herself burrow into what she isn't good at. Instead she'll focus on what she is: her mission. Taking down the First Order. Saving the universe from war and darkness. Again.

"My first dance with Jae was informative."

Ben tenses slightly. He twirls her, his free hand resting on the small of his back. Rey's dress whirls around them like a swirling nebula.

"I saw."

The orchestra cues the first separation. Rey and Ben turn from each other, briefly facing other partners. Rey's is a young man, who seems surprised and thrilled to be face to face with the Virya Vorian. She dips politely past him, their wrists briefly touching, then she circles back around to Ben.

"Good news," she says. "I know when and where the meeting is tonight."

"Bad news?" His hands frame her waist and, while twirling, lifts her off the ground. She dips her head down to his ear.

"He wants me to go alone."

Ben puts her down. Hard. Before they spin away from each other, his fingers clench on hers. It feels like an involuntary spasm rather than an attempt at unspoken communication. They circle different partners, then reunite. Ben twirls her one, twice, then pulls her so sharply back to him that Rey has to catch herself on his chest. He's fuming.

"Absolutely. Not."

"Listen. Maybe if I-"

"No."

"Wait, just… just listen for a-"

"_No_."

The music demands they separate again. Rey spins out, ignoring a quizzical look from her new partner, a middle aged man who must see the irritation on her face. She dips perfunctorily around him, wrists touching briefly, and then banks for another round with Ben. He wheels around his own partner and angles for her like an X-wing. When the meet, its practically a collision.

"You think I like it?" she whispers harshly. "I don't. But if I don't go alone, they may not let me in at all. So we need to discuss the possibility-"

Ben dips her. Very sudden and very deep. Rey's stomach lurches, displacing the words that had been in her throat. She clutches instinctively to him for balance.

Then he pulls her back up and continues the dance as if he hadn't nearly dropped her.

"Nice," she snaps. "Very mature."

"We're not discussing it. You are not going alone."

He twirls her. Rey grits her teeth, trying very hard not to let her Rey-annoyance break through her Virya-veneer. They separate, spin around other partners, then come together again.

"Why do you always have to be so difficult?" she hisses.

"Look whose talking."

"You're the one who said this was important. Remember? You're the one who keeps reminding us that everything rides on this. If we don't pull this off tonight, it all goes to nothing."

"And if you die tonight, my _life _goes to nothing," Ben snaps. "So stop talking about going alone."

Rey's mouth snaps shut. The music cues for separation and she, a bit numbly, starts to turn away from Ben for the partner change.

His hand catches her wrist. He pulls her back into him. Despite the crescendo of music around them, the dancers all swirling and twirling as fast as they can, Ben stands still in the middle of it all, holding her there with him.

"What are you doing? The dance-"

"Promise me you won't," he says, his voice still fierce but now sapped of anger. "We figure something out. We lie or cheat or deceive them in some way, I don't care, but you _don't _go alone. You have to promise me that, or I'm not letting you go."

Rey stands enclosed in Ben's arms, shocked at the risk that he is taking. At the sudden intensity of his emotion.

Behind her, she can hear the outrage of whoever was meant to be her final partner, demanding Ben release her.

"-cuse me, Sir… _Sir! _If you please, you are breaking the form of the waltz!"

Ben doesn't care. He ignores the man behind her, and the woman waiting behind him. He ignores the dancers spinning all around them and just stands there, waiting for her, anchored in a world within the other world. A world from which, until she gives her promise, she will not be able to break free.

Does she even want to?

"Okay," she says, even though she cannot fathom how this will work, how the two of them aren't dooming the entire mission by making an impossible promise to each other. Even still, she says to him, "I promise."

**#**

As the music ends, the couples drift off the floor. Rey is still slightly dazed by Ben's sudden break of emotion and the impossible promise she'd made to him in response. They say nothing to each other, but as they reach the edge of the steps, Rey cannot bring herself to let go of his hand.

Two men are fast approaching them, each holding two drinks. Rey is half way through waving them off when something about the darker man's gait catches her eye. She does a double take.

"_F-"_ She chokes down the name in time from saying it aloud. _Finn? Poe?!_

"We thought you could use a drink," not-Finn says, holding a glass out to Rey.

Rey accepts it, albeit a bit dumbly. It's warm against her fingers. Ben takes the other glass from not-Poe.

"So, old friend," not-Poe says a bit louder than necessary and, to Rey's surprise, claps Ben on the back in a very chummy way. "Won't you introduce me to your fiance? You said she might be interested in investing in my little project, didn't you?"

Ben's mask stares at Poe, silently asking what in the _Force _they're doing approaching them directly.

"Perhaps we can go somewhere with a bit of privacy? The project is all very… proprietary." Not-Poe indicates over his shoulder at a series of small balconies lining the exterior of the dome. Rey hadn't noticed them earlier, either because the snow outside had been too thick to see them clearly, or she'd been too taken with the rest of the room.

"If you'll lead the way," she says. "I'd be interested to hear more."

The four of them stroll toward an empty balcony, not-Poe chatting enthusiastically away about what a good business opportunity he thinks this venture would be for the Vorian estate. Ben stops to lever open the balcony door, a pane of glass and steel that blends seamlessly with the rest of the dome. A frigid wind gusts around them. They step out quickly before the other guests can notice and Ben shuts the door behind them.

Outside the air is stiff and cold, making Rey's chest tighten. She takes a sip of the drink, which warms her slightly, some sort of mulled wine. She tries not to think how they are standing thousands of feet over an alien canyon. How someone might be watching them from inside the dome.

Once outside, not-Finn turns to Ben. He asks a question that Rey can barely hear over the wind. "… private out here…? Safe… speak?"

Ben nods.

Finn nods, then wheels on Rey. "No," he says. "No way in the Force."

"No, what?" Rey raises her brows, maintaining the persona of Virya just in case someone is watching them through the glass, snow-pelted walls. She angles herself so her back is to the ballroom just in case.

"No… conversation you… had on… dance floor." Finn is nearly whispering. Rey is only catches every other word, but it's enough to get the idea. He knows about her and Ben's argument on the dance floor, and that she'd suggested going to the Inner Circle meeting alone.

"What? How did you-"

"Forgot about these?" Poe tucks a dark curl behind his ear, his thumb lingering on his earlobe for a moment longer than natural.

_The nano radios._ The thought hits Rey like a sack of bricks. _I'm an idiot._

"Turn it on and you can hear us through the mic."

Rey thinks about the device turning on for three full seconds and hears a little beep in her ear.

"Better?" Poe whispers, so soft that she can't actually hear the words from his mouth. She hears them, however, through the microphone planted in her ear.

Ben's must have been activate when they were dancing. And that means Finn, Poe, and Rose (wherever or whoever she was), had heard their conversation. Their _entire_ conversation.

Rey is suddenly grateful it's so bloody cold out here. She can blame the temperature for the red pooling in her cheeks.

"That's already been settled," Rey says, a little sharper than necessary. "I won't go it alone."

"Great," Poe says, turning to Ben and Finn. "But I vote we put together at least a sketch of a plan before she changes her mind. First, where exactly is this happening?"

"The tower at midnight," Rey whispers as low as she can. The wind lifts her words away into the night, but the others can hear her through the nano radios in their ears.

"I know it," Ben says. "At the very top of the palace. Don't look up in case one of them is watching."

Finn's head jerks back down. "Are there any other ways inside? Could we could sneak in without them knowing?"

Ben goes silent for a moment. Long enough that Rey knows he doesn't like the answer. "No. There's a staircase. One way in and one way out. As far as I've ever seen at least."

"Then we make them let us in with her," Poe says. "Say we're her special advisors or something."

"That won't work," Rey says. "Jae wasn't even supposed to tell me about the meeting. They don't want her there. I think it will take all the convincing to just get me in the door."

"Wait," Ben says suddenly. "I just remembered something."

Finn glances at him. "Another way in?"

"Of sorts."

"Of sorts? What does that mean, _'of sorts'_?"

"Yeah, now really isn't the time to be cryptic. I think I preferred when you were throwing Force tantrums. At least I always knew what you were thinking."

Ben ignores the comment. "The tower only has one door. But it also has a balcony. Like this one, but even smaller. I could wait there, just outside. The nano-radio connection would let me hear everything. With the snow storm, they may never notice I'm there. If we're lucky."

"If we're lucky?" Rey repeats incredulously. "Ad what if we're _not_?"

Ben doesn't have an answer for that.

"Wait, hang on," Finn frowns. "So there's one stairway up, right? And one door in. And the tower is the only room that opens onto the balcony?"

"That's right."

"Alright so, maybe I'm being stupid here," Finn continues. "But how are you going to _get _onto the balcony if you can't go through the tower."

In response, Ben's helmet tilts marginally toward the cliff face, out of which the palace itself has been carved.

It takes Rey only a moment to catch onto what he is thinking. When she does, her stomach drops.

"You're joking," Finn says, his tone deadpan.

When Ben doesn't answer, Rey takes his hand, gripping it hard. "You're _not_."

"Sorry," Poe interrupts. "Now, I'm not following. What exactly is he not?"

"This idiot," Finn says, crossing his arms, "is planning to climb."


	36. Family Meeting

They're careful not to be seen anywhere near not-Finn and not-Poe for the rest of the night.

They share two more dances, dodging waiters with their trays of caviar and alcohol, and only socializing with the few guests who dare approach Virya Vorian directly. Then it's time for Ben to leave. It is a full half hour before midnight, but it will take that long at least for him to pull off scaling an ice cliff in a blizzard. _If_ he pulls it off at all.

He takes her into a secluded alcove where they can speak privately.

"You remember where the entrance is?"

"Yes. You only showed me four times."

"Good. And remember, don't arrive a minute before midnight. If you're early I might not be there yet."

"I know."

"I'm serious. It'll be more dangerous if I rush."

"No, I promise. Not a minute before midnight."

"Okay. The balcony door is glass, just like these ones down here. I'll smudge some snow against the lower pane when I get there. When you see it, you won't have to worry about me."

"Easier said than done," Rey mutters.

"What?"

"How can I _not _worry about you? Given the circumstances?"

"Don't. I'll be fine. Just worry about yourself."

"Myself? I'm not the one scaling a glacier in a blizzard without the Force."

"And I'm not the one walking into a room with the most dangerous people in the universe."

"Well, I'm not the one -"

"_Hey!" _Poe's voice snaps in their ears through the nano-radio. "_This is adorable, guys, really. But the clock's ticking and people are starting to wonder why you're just off over there whispering. How_ _'bout you both agree to handle worrying about the other and call it a night?" _

Rey and Ben jerk apart. She hadn't even noticed they'd been standing so close.

"We're engaged," Ben snaps. "We're supposed to go off and whisper."

_"Alright well, good job, it's very convincing. Now get moving." _

Ben looks once more at Rey. And then, moving all at once as if to keep from changing his mind, he leaves her standing in the alcove. Alone. Rey stares at the spot he had been, tracing his outline in empty air.

_It won't be the last time you see him_ , she tells herself, sinking every ounce of willpower into believing it. _It won't._

**#**

Over the next fifteen minutes, the other family members discretely slip into the corridor Ben had pointed out to her. It's simple and unassuming archway, nothing she would have investigated if she hadn't known better. The twins leave first, arm in arm. The Lannlas clan go next: two men and two women, forming a quadrant around the boy Mikael, who walks like a child emperor in their center. Jae breaks away last, finally freeing himself from his admirers. As he steps through the arch, he sends a fleeting glance Rey's way.

It is an effort to wait. Restlessness eats at her. But she'd told Ben she wouldn't arrive a minute before midnight. And he was out there, somewhere in that blizzard, out of radio range, picking his way up the ice-crusted cliff, and trusting her. The only thing she could do for him now was to keep her word.

Finally, at ten minutes to the hour, Rey hands her drink to a passing waiter and speaks so low that only the nano-radio picks her up. "Alright, time's up. I'm going in."

She slips between the crowd, making for the arch.

"_Copy,_" Finn crackles in her ear. "_If something goes wrong just call for us. If we have to, we'll storm the place and get you guys out."_

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Rey smiles. "But it's nice to know you've got our backs."

_"Always. But don't let your_ _-"_

She steps beneath the arch. Instantly, the orchestra and chatter of the ballroom is muted, as if the the whole party has been plunged underwater behind her. Rey turns. She can see the dancers moving in synchronized time. She can see the band, still playing their instruments with quick deftness. But any sounds of the music, talk, and laughter have been dampened. And the radio in her ear has gone dead.

"Guys. Can you hear me?" In the empty hall, Rey's whispers seem loud as screams. "Guys?"

"Virya?"

Rey turns. Jae is standing behind her, giving her a quizzical look.

"Jae," Rey says, quickly adopting Virya's accent. "Were you waiting for me?"

"I thought we might go in together. Unless… your fiancé?" Jae glances over Rey's shoulder, as if he half expects Ben to be looming in the doorway, ready to spring on him.

"I sent him away. You said to come alone."

"Well done. I wouldn't have expected it to be that easy." He offers her his arm. "They'll have to let you in if we go in together. Shall we?"

Rey hesitates. She wants an excuse to go back into the ballroom, re-establish radio with Finn and Poe, and figure out what had caused the broken connection in the first place. Something to do with the archway, if she had to guess. A jamming field she'd passed through to keep anyone from entering with a wire. It was probably just a standard security measure and nothing designed specifically for her. Probably.

Virya wouldn't have ever noticed it. And so, failing to find a good excuse, Rey links her arm in Jae's. "Lead the way then."

**#**

The staircase to the tower is constructed from white stone and veined with faintly glowing mineral mined from the cliffs outside. They are spiraling, elegant, and interminable. Barely big enough for Rey to walk with Jae side by side. More than once, she catches him glancing over their shoulders.

"Something wrong?" she asks.

"Ah. No. It's just… for some reason, I keep expecting your new fiancé to come storming up the steps and knife me in the back."

"I told you I sent him away."

"So you did. But he didn't seem like the type to simply take to that."

"Oh? And what type did he seem like?"

"The jealous, overly protective, and violent one."

Rey's smile twitches. _If you only knew the half of it..._ "Well, I could always let go of your arm if you'd more secure."

Jae laughs. He squeezes gently. "No. No, we can't have that. You'll be the one to convince him to spare my life."

As they continue up the steps, Rey thinks of Ben, out there somewhere, climbing in the freezing gale, without the Force to bolster his endurance or strength. Her gut twists with every upward step, the climb which is so easy for her, yet so treacherous for him.

_Stop it_ , she berates herself inwardly. _Stop it. He's fine. _

_But what if he isn't? _

She thinks, unbidden, of Exegol and Ben's long-limbed body plummeting into the dark.

_What if?_

If she walks into the tower and there is no snow smeared on the balcony door, if he has fallen to his death while she was in that stupid, pretty room with all those stupid, pretty people, smiling and laughing and pretending to be a stupid, pretty heiress while the other half of her was plummeting into a void…

"Are you nervous?" Jae says.

Rey jolts out her thoughts. "Nervous? Why would I be?"

"You wouldn't," Jae says. "But your grip says something otherwise."

Rey realizes she's clutching at Jae's arm. She forces herself to relax and tries to brush it off. "Sorry. I was just… thinking some unpleasant thoughts. It's nothing to do with you. Or with this."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me," Jae says softly. "I'm not exactly looking forward to this either."

Rey offers him a smile as they step onto the landing and find themselves in front of a stone door. Anticipation pumps inside Rey's veins. Finally, she has arrived. She expects Jae to drop her arm here, but he doesn't. They move to the door together. And together they step inside.

A long table is the first thing Rey notices, the families of the Inner Circle seated around it. On one side of the room, a stone hearth is wreathed in thick shadow by the light of a half-dead fire. And there, in the corner, a glass and steel door that must lead to the balcony. The black of night presses up against its panes, except for the lower right corner, which has an irregular smudge of snow. Rey nearly shudders in relief. Ben's made it. He's with her. Alive.

Her relief is short-lived, however, when she notices that everyone seated at the table is staring at her. The Drakuns, the Lannlas, and a austere, elderly woman with jet black hair and sharp golden eyes. Those creases deepen when she sees Rey and Jae enter the room arm in arm.

"Grandson," Her voice is deep and resinous for her wiry build. At the sound of it, Jae straightens like a soldier coming to attention.

Lady Tannias looks Rey over like a piece of livestock paraded out before her. Apparently unimpressed by what she sees, she turns her golden gaze to her Jae. "And the other one?"

The door slides shut behind them. Rey processes the strangeness of Lady Taeya's words.

_The other one? But she didn't even want _me _here._

Rey shoots a questioning look at Jae, but he just looks fixedly at his Grandmother, shaking his head. "He wasn't with her."

The creases in Lady Taeya's face deepen.

Rey tries to slip her arm out from Jae's and it tightens, pinning her to him.

"Don't," Jae says, half warning half command. He doesn't even look at her.

Rey's stomach bottoms out. She's being played. Instead of reaching for the light saber she doesn't have, she lifts her chin and tries to channel Virya's cool outrage. "What is this?" she demands.

"Sit down, Virya," one of the Drakun girls, she can't tell which, leans her chin onto her elbows and purrs. "Then we'll explain everything, though you might wish we hadn't."

"Gladly. If Jae would return my arm."

She shoots a slicing look his way but Jae continues to ignore her, waiting for his grandmother's cue. After a pause, Lady Taeya nods. Jae releases her. Blood floods stinging into Rey's elbow, which had started to go numb. Beneath hat gentlemanly demeanor, Jae had a startling strength. Rey makes a mental note to remember that as he takes the empty seat beside his grandmother.

In her periphery, Rey sees movement on the balcony. A smudge of darker shadow coming for the door. Very faintly, she shakes her head, asking for more time. Even if this is a trap for Virya, Rey might still be able to play it out and extract a confession from whoever murdered the Vorians. Then they'd have what they needed to start making arrests. Warily, she takes the seat nearest to her and prays Ben will understand. The game has changed, but it isn't over yet.

Everyone is still staring at her. But not in the way she'd been ready for — there's no surprise in their faces. No affronted outrage. This is a room of people who had been expecting her. Not only expecting, _anticipating._ Capturing Virya Vorian, Rey realizes, had always been the evening's main event.

_They're trying to finish what they started_ . _They're trying to kill the last Vorian. If Virya were here, she'd be furious. And she'd use that fury to cover any fear._

Rey sits back and lets the disdain show openly on her face. "Well? Wasn't someone going to tell me what everyone's playing at?"

The big, loud Lannlas man who had approached her first, calling her Lady Death, throws his head back and laughs. "What we're playing at, she says. That's rich."

"Uncle Lynus," Mikael warns, his mouth hidden behind steepled fingers. "Don't speak out of turn."

Lynus gestures exasperatedly at Rey. "Oh, what of it? We have her now. What's the point?"

"Have me?" Rey sneers, hoping to goad the tactless brute into giving away what she needs. "Like you had me three months ago? When you thought I'd been murdered with my father and the rest of my family? Because if that's how you mean, I'll reserve my concern."

Lynus grins, an eager baring of teeth.

"A secret assassination, then?" Rey prods. "Is that what this is? Just like one of you did to my father?"

Lynus puts an elbow on the table. "I don't know much about secrecy, m'Lady. When a Lannlas kills, we do it in the open. As for what happened to Doran Vorian, don't here." He jerks a knuckly thumb at the hearth. "Look over there."

Rey follows Lynus' thumb to the shadowy hearth. As she looks, the shadows around it shape. Not shadows, she realizes. Figures. Two people wearing hooded cloaks. As she sees them, the taller one steps into the light. The hood drops, revealing a face that cannot be there, because it being there is impossible.

"Hello," Doran Vorian smiles. "Daughter."

**#**

Rey's mind freezes and races all once. It's a trick. A trap. Doran Vorian is dead. Isn't he? But then who is the man before her? And if it truly is Doran, she thinks with a flash of panic, won't he know in an instant that Rey is not his real daughter?

"It can't be," Rey chokes. "You're dead."

Doran's mouth twitches. Across the table, Rey hears the Lannlas chuckle. The Drakun twins whisper delightedly to each other. It strikes her then that no one else is surprised. It's definitely a trap. But one they're all in on.

"If I'm dead, my dear," Doran says, "then you are insane. So is everyone in this room for coming to the call of a ghost. Or alternatively, I am very much alive and you are simply in over your head. Which do you think is more likely?"

Rey stares speechlessly. The man crosses the hearth and takes the last empty seat, right at the head of the table.

Then he just watches her. And Rey, not knowing what else to do, watches him back. Doran has strong features, a square jawline, and an old scar on his temple. Thick blond hair, which he'd gifted to his daughter, and the bluest eyes she's ever seen. So intensely blue they blinded Rey to whatever thoughts lay underneath.

"Well?" He says finally. "Come and give me a kiss."

Rey's skin crawls but she can't see how to refuse. Stiffly, she stands, chair legs scraping, and makes her way toward him, aware that the entire room is watching her.

_It doesn't make sense, _she thinks numbly. _It doesn't. Why would Doran fake his death to his own daughter?_

Doran turns his cheek expectantly. And Rey, certain he will feel the pounding of her heart through her skin, leans down and touches her lips to the pale wedge of scar tissue on his brow. As she pulls back, Doran catches her chin in his hand.

Rey freezes.

His fingers dig along her jawbone. Those bright blue eyes seem to go straight through her.

_He knows_ , she thinks. _Of course he does. His own daughter._

"You've gone much farther in your betrayal I ever thought you were capable of," Doran says mildly. "But I suppose you had the best of help. That fool, Leia. Her idiot Senators."

"Father," Rey forces the word, difficult with his thumb and fingers digging into the hollows of her cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never met - "

"And of course there is your _real _mentor," Doran smiles. "I expect all the real work was done there."

Rey tries to grasp enough straws to keep her act intact. If she doesn't think fast enough, Doran is sure to notice that she's a fake.

He squeezes her chin hard in his hand, then suddenly releases her.

Rey takes a faltering step back, raising fingers to her jaw. "I don't understand. Who are you talking about?"

Doran snaps his fingers, and the smaller shadow steps out from the hearth and into the light. The hood drops. Rey's racing thoughts turn to dust. Her heart collapses.

_No._

"He's talking about me, of course," Virya says, laying a hand on Doran's shoulder. "Oh don't give me that look, Rey. I did warn you, remember? In the Inner Circle, you're more likely to be stabbed in the back by an ally than in the chest by your foe."


	37. New Order

"You," Rey breathes.

"That's right. Me."

"Since when?"

Virya gives Rey disappointed, _Oh, come now_ look. Rey's heart sinks.

The sadness, brief and stabbing, is quickly washed out by a wave of anger and alarm. "Where is Leia? Is she safe? The ship-"

Virya's head tilts quizzically. "Still asking questions? Haven't you just learned not to trust a single thing I say?"

Rey burns to strike the other woman in the face. But she knows the rest of the room is just waiting for a trigger to violence. Everyone including Ben, hidden somewhere in the balcony shadows. Ben, who by some miracle has managed to restrain himself seeing Virya's betrayal. But the moment violence breaks out, Rey knows there will be no stopping him. So she forces herself to be still. For his sake.

"So what?" she asks. "Was it all lies from the start? Your father's death. Running from the First Order and seeking asylum with Leia… none of it was true?"

"Afraid not. Though you didn't make it terribly difficult for me."

"I _trusted _you," Rey spits.

"And whose to blame for that?" Virya snaps, suddenly right up in Rey's face. "You were spying yourself. Lying yourself. Just for different people. Yet still you went on, blindly, _insistently _trusting me, you stupid, _stupid girl_."

Rey's breath hitches at the sudden intensity. Far from the calm gloating of Doran, Virya is full of repressed spite, as if resentful over a victory too easily won. Angry, as if she was the betrayed and not the betrayer.

"You should have known better," Virya says bitterly.

"Indeed," Doran agrees. "Not the brightest star in the galaxy, is she? And while we're on that topic, Virya, don't you think it's time we let our other guest in from the cold?"

Virya's straightens, all her burning emotion shoved back beneath the ice of her beauty. Her mouth presses into a line and, to Rey's horror, she looks straight at the balcony door. Straight at Ben.

Rey rushes forward to grab her.

Virya whirls, throwing her hand up between herself and Rey. It won't be enough. Rey is a trained Jedi and Virya is only a -

The Force slams into Rey like a charging bull, knocking her hard into the wall and pinning her there, feet off the ground.

_What?_ Rey blinks dazedly, her mind struggling to reassemble from impact. _What?_

Virya turns back to the balcony. With the flick of her wrist, the door flies open. The blizzard comes roaring in. And in the midst of its pelting wind and driving snow, a figure in black is dragged along the floor, on his knees, struggling against invisible bonds.

_Oh, no. _Rey's muddled mind cracks with fear. She struggles, mind clearing. "No, stop!"

Virya sends the Force slamming into Rey again, knocking the air from her chest. Rey gasps like a fish on a dock. The whole room spins.

"_You _stay right there," Virya says to her. Then, using the Force, she hauls Ben's struggling body up onto the broad table.

The other families stare in shock at the prisoner before them.

Rey watches in half-dazed horror, a blurry film stretched over her vision, the air stripped from her lungs. She has to use the Force now, no matter the risk. This has gone too far.

As if sensing her thoughts, Virya clenches a delicate fist and a band of Force energy squeezes around Rey's throat. The pressure isn't enough to kill but enough to make breathing and speaking difficult. Also, Rey discovers with horror, it cuts her off from touching her own connection with the Force. A choke hold, both physical and metaphysical. It's a sophisticated maneuver, the kind that takes a lifetime to master. And _Virya _has done it. Virya, who had worked alongside Rey for months without showing a hint of Force sensitivity. Virya, who only cared about high society and pretty dresses and marrying Kylo Ren.

Or so Rey had thought. But she'd been wrong about her. Perhaps more wrong than she'd ever been about anyone else in her life.

Apparently, the other families had also never known. After a brief and stunned pause, they erupt.

"Since when?!" Lynus slams a fist on the table, nearly cracking it. "Since fucking when is your daughter is connected to the Force!?"

"You had him?" Jae demands of Virya, striding to the door and slamming it shut. The winter storm is replaced by his blustering. "For how long, Virya? Before you told me to retrieve them from the ball? You could have told me."

Doran raises a hand and the room goes silent. Though most of them look unhappy about it. Mikael has to lay a hand on Lynus' shoulder to make him stop bellowing. But judging by the look on the boy's face, he seems to have half a mind to slip the muzzle off his uncle's frothing jaws and let him bite.

"Let me remind you now," Doran says stonily. "I do not answer to you lot. You answer to me. That was our agreement. I finish off Kylo Ren and the last Jedi. In return, you fall in line behind me as your new Supreme Leader."

Tension pulses around the table. But no one challenges Doran.

"Since you asked, Lynus, my eldest has always been connected to the Force. It runs in our bloodline. And that is only one of many secret advantages I have kept from you over the years. You might keep that in mind before you speak out of turn again."

"Your bloodline, eh?" Lynus grunts, though he seems unsettled. "Bullshit. If your other children had even a smidgen of the Force, you wouldn't have blown them up along with your wife."

_Blown them up along with your wife? _Rey's unfocused gaze finds Virya, looking for a reaction. So Virya's mother and siblings had been murdered. That hadn't been a lie. But it was her own father who had done it. Had Virya known? Had she helped?

"Bring him to me," Doran says.

At first, Rey's foggy mind thinks he's talking about Lynus. But when Virya curls her fingers, it is Ben's body that skates the length of the table. Then he is kneeling before the Vorians like a sacrificial offering.

"Remove this," Doran orders next. "I want to see his face."

Part of Rey spasms as Virya reaches for Ben's mask. Once it's off, there will be no denying his identity. No protecting him from this dark cult that had once tainted his very soul. The First Order will see Ben Solo on his knees before them, and they will reach out and destroy him all over again.

"No," Rey rasps, surprised to find that the noose has loosened slightly. Virya jerks, surprised by Rey's voice. Had she weakened? Or had her focus simply slipped?

"Virya," Rey wheezes. "Don't…"

The strangling band around Rey's throat tightens once again. Rather than try to fight it, Rey goes perfectly still. She holds stubbornly to her thread of consciousness. If she provokes Virya again and the choke hold tightens any further, even Rey won't be able to stay conscious. On the other hand, if Virya becomes distracted, there's a chance her hold might lapse once more.

Virya presses the release mechanisms in Ben's helmet. She knows exactly where they are. Of course she does. The Seamster, _her_ servant, had designed it.

The mask falls away. Rey expects an explosion of violence, bellowing and blood, and the crunching of bone. But whatever silencing noose Virya had slipped over Rey, she must have done the same to Ben when he was out on the balcony. That was why he hadn't burst in immediately at Virya's betrayal. Rey had thought it had been newfound patience, but he'd likely been immobilized before Rey had even reached the tower. He'd been out there, trapped, and unable to warn her.

Now Ben kneels before their captors, rage and bitterness burning black in his eyes. And beneath that, there is a touch of something Rey recognizes. Fear. Not of losing his life, but of losing everything else all over again. A fear of failure. Shame.

Rey struggles uselessly to slip out of Virya's choke hold. To try and touch the Force without giving herself away. If she could only get to him. If they could only _fight _together, they could kill everyone in this room.

_And then, _some fuzzy part of Rey's mind reminds her, _you would destroy this entire planet. As soon as you touch the Force, you kill him, yourself, and everyone you love who came and risked their lives to help you._

Virya reaches out and trails her fingers along the side of Ben's face. Her cold taunts are nowhere to be found now. She stares down at him with contempt, anger, and bitterness. Those emotions steal all the clever cutting words from her mouth.

"Planning to kill him with love, Virya?" One of the Drakun girls asks coyly.

"We're curious to see how that works out for you," the other purrs.

Only Virya's eyes move, landing on the Drakuns' faces like a slap. "I haven't decided how to kill him yet. Is that your way of volunteering to be a trial run, Evain?"

The twins fall silent. Ewyan snakes an arm around her sister's shoulders, half protective, half comforting.

"She has a point, Virya," Jae says. "The longer he's alive, the longer he's a threat. Why didn't you kill him the instant he was captured?"

Virya drops her hand from Ben's face. "My father just warned against speaking out of turn, Jae. Did you already forget?"

"And we swore fealty to your father," Lady Tannias replies for her grandson, eyes narrowed and voice leathery. "Not you. Doran, you'd do well to ensure your daughter knows her place in this new order."

"You swore fealty to the Vorian name," Virya counters. "You won't snake your way out of it now. Just because you treat your grandson like a disposable puppet does not mean I will tolerate the same."

"I will not be condescend to by the likes of you, child. I am the matriarch of my house."

"Oh, yes you will. Your house is a vassal to mine now. And you are a withering crone. You believe yourself above me, Taeya? If I decide to kill you, my father won't stop me. The one who doesn't know their place in the new order is you."

Taeya sneers. "You are an insolent, spoiled-"

The lithe muscles in Virya's shoulders flex.

Taeya's insult chokes off into a gurgle.

The room freezes, stunned. Taeya's creased skin darkens. Her narrow eyes bulge.

"What are you doing?" Jae stands, chair toppling. He lays a hand to his grandmother's throat, feeling for fingers he cannot touch. Taeya's eyes twitch toward his face, outraged and disbelieving even as they begin to roll back.

"Stop it, Virya!" Jae's voice breaks. "You're killing her! Doran, make her stop!"

But Doran only watches, and Virya doesn't stop, not for all of Jae's begging. Unwavering, she squeezes out the last of Lady Taeya's years, until finally the old woman goes limp.

And in the midst of this all, Rey feels the stranglehold around her own throat loosening. Degree by slight degree. Virya is talented in the Force, and has clearly been training all her life. But she can only do so many things at once before her focus slips. And that's where Rey's opportunity lies.

By the time Lady Taeya collapses face down onto the table, her grandson horrified at her side, Rey is breathing freely again. She is still pinned to the wall, and there is still a collar holding her back from her own connection to he Force. But her lungs are filled with air and her mind swims up to the surface of clarity. Rather than try to break free and alert Virya again, this time Rey decides to bide her time. If the patience earns her more slack, she may get a cleaner chance to strike.

"What have you done?" Jae whispers, staring at Taeya's corpse in horror.

"Oh please," Virya snaps. "You should thank me. You'd have never been freed from her clutches on your own."

"She was my grandmother, Virya."

"She was a cold, heartless bitch."

"Look whose talking," Ewyan mutters.

Virya looks sharply across the table and the Drakun twins put their hands up in surrender.

"It's a compliment in our books, Virya. You know that."

Virya scoffs and faces Doran, making a point of turning her back on the rest of the room, showing she doesn't consider them a threat. She lays a hand on Ben's shoulder, ignoring the way his eyes blaze at the touch.

"Father, I want to be alone with him."

Rey's heart skips.

Doran, who up until this point had been watching his daughter establish her authority, frowns. "To what end?"

"None. Other than that you promised him to me."

"I recall no such promise."

"When I was a girl. You said he would be mine."

"And so he will be. When you kill him for me, his very life will be yours."

"No," Virya shakes her head. "It will be yours. As it should be. But I want to be alone with him first. Before he dies."

"And what about this one?" Doran asks, glancing at Rey as if she were no more than a butterfly pinned to an exhibit wall.

Virya scoffs. "As you can see, she is no real challenge for me. I'll deal with her as we planned. Surely, I've proven I don't need your supervision for that?"

Anger blazes briefly behind Doran's blue eyes. For a moment, Rey thinks he will deny her. Then, glancing around the rest of the room, he nods. "Very well. The rest of us will go down and announce that this ball is to be my coronation. By the time my daughter joins us, she will be a goddess among mortals."

"Goddess?" Mikael asks. "Care to elaborate on that?"

Doran gestures to Rey. "She doesn't look like much, but this girl holds a great deal of the Force inside her. After my daughter rids us of this broken fool, she'll drain the Jedi of her power and take it for herself."

_She'll what?_ Rey's skin ripples with chill. She remembers Palpatine drawing the Force out her and Ben in Exegol. But surely, Virya wasn't at the same level as a Sith Master. Was she? And, the way Rey was now, prone to detonate at the slightest touch, would it be safe for even a Master to try? Did Virya understand that risk?

There is a low mutter of surprise. But no one dares to protest after Virya's little display. The Lannlas and Drakuns stand and filter warily out of the room. Jae lingers to collect his grandmother's body from the table. In his arms, the dead Lady Taeya looks like a mummified child, small and frail. Jae, slipped from outrage into shock, casts a stunned look at Virya before stepping out the door.

Doran leaves last, pausing in the doorway. He lowers his voice so the others cannot hear. "Never," he warns Virya, "make a request of me in public again. We are a unified front now. You and I. Pulling something like that is not something I'll tolerate again. Understood?"

Virya nods. "Yes, Father. I understand."

"Good."

Then the door closes, leaving the three of them alone. Ben, Rey, and Virya.

"Well," Virya sighs, leaning against the back of her father's chair. "Here we are. Alone at last."


	38. Traitor

For a long moment, Virya does nothing. Says nothing. She just looks at Ben, as if he is a difficult knot she's deliberating between trying to pull apart or cutting clean in half. Rey itches to jump between them, to draw Virya's attention. But she knows better. She has only one more chance of Virya dropping her guard. If she acts before then, both she and Ben are good as dead.

Yet Virya also seems to be waiting for something. The silence goes so long that eventually time itself seems to take notice. It lingers, watching for the outcome between the two who are unable to move and the third who is unwilling.

In that pocket of distended time, Rey finds herself beginning to wonder. To hope.

Maybe Virya will let them go. Just sigh and roll her eyes, scoff at their incompetence, give them a good verbal scouring, and turn them loose on the Inner Circle. Or she'll escape with them to the hangar, where Finn, Poe, and Rose will already be waiting. They'll all go back to base ship together to regroup.

It's possible, isn't it? After all, Virya had proven herself an immaculate actress. Who was to say that the last few minutes hadn't been her grand performance, and the months of her allegiance on base ship hadn't been real?

"I thought about what I was going to say to you."

Virya's calm tone shatters the illusion of stopped time, like stones assaulting a placid lake.

"I suppose you want some sort of speech. Snoke always loved those. All my grand plans for the future. The _hows_ and the _whys _and the _whens_ that you'll never be a part of. The thing is, Lord Ren, I'm not sure you deserve even that. I haven't been able to decide."

Virya leans in close to Ben until their faces mere inches apart. The notches of Rey's spine trill.

"Here's what I do want you to know," Virya says, soft and intense. "I am the reason this is happening. _I_ made it possible. I am the linchpin that brought everything down. If you'd only paid attention, you could have seen that before now. That's what I want to leave you with."

Ben stares at Virya with murder in his eyes. Far from being intimidated, Virya devours the look with morbid fascination.

"And you?" she asks, almost hungrily. "What do you want to tell me?"

And then Rey feels the Force loosen around her throat, just enough to allow speech. It is as she suspected then. Virya can only juggle so many things at once. In loosening her hold on Ben, she has also, perhaps unknowingly, loosened her hold on Rey. It's not enough though. Not yet.

"Well? Any last words for me before you die, Lord Ren?"

Ben spits, narrowly missing Virya's cheek. His voice is ragged, a hot coal searing flesh. "I have nothing to say to a traitor."

Virya jerks back as if scalded. Then she scoffs, smiles, and strikes Ben so hard across the face that Rey feels the reverb in the air. The Force sinks into the blow. Ben's jaw snaps left and comes back bloody. It takes everything Rey has to stay still and silent, waiting for her chance.

"Traitor?" Virya repeats, disbelieving. "Who betrayed who when you forwent the mantle of Kylo Ren? Who abandoned an entire empire when they needed their Supreme Leader most? The darkness needs a leader. Someone strong enough to bring the rest of them in line. That doesn't just go away because you decide you don't want to be a part of it. It never will."

Virya searches Ben's face. Her voice lowers into a hissing, whispered confession. "I _did _leave my father for you, you know. After what he did to them... my brothers. My _mother._ Those fools were never anything but loyal and in return he-"

Virya cuts herself off, visibly steering away from that train of thought before it derails.

"I made him believe it was his idea. He thought he was sending me on a mission to see if you were still out there. Still a threat. But I was always coming to find you. You were the only one who could rein him in. Him and the rest of these jackals."

She gestures with disgust at table, as if the chairs were still occupied by the other families.

"For months, I searched for you. Everyone doubted but I never did. I believed in you. I _chose_ you. And what did I find instead? A pathetic shadow of a man, self-condemned to oblivion, unwilling to return to his rightful place. You'd reduced yourself to nothing, and for what? Her?"

Virya's eyes flash over to Rey, dark and scalding.

"This girl who tried to kill you? Destroy everything you built? And when she wasn't doing that, she was running from you. Undermining you. A Jedi. A Skywalker." Virya spits. "I devoted my_ life _to you. I walked away from my father to stand by your side. I would have made you an emperor, and you threw that away like it was nothing! Yet you call _me _the traitor? How dare you?" Virya's gaze anchors back on Ben. Her voice cracks when she whispers, "How _could _you?"

And just like that, Rey understands what she is watching. Perceives it fully for the first time. Virya had lied about almost everything, but her feelings for Kylo Ren had been real. They still were. That was the source of her hatred. Her bitterness, calcified into armor. Beneath it, there was a wound that wasn't healing, plain as the crack in her voice. The wound of abandonment by the one she'd trusted. The one she'd loved.

Rey knows that wound. She knows it all too well.

Almost unbidden, her lips part. Speaking is a risk but she can't stay silent. Not when she recognizes the same pain she'd carried nearly all her life. "Virya-"

The other woman whirls, slapping the rest of Rey's sentence from her mouth, along with a splatter of blood across the stone floor.

"Silence," Virya says coldly. "This is a private conversation."

Ben surges up from the table, enraged. His whole body bulges as he strains to rip free of the Force. "_Touch_ her again," he snarls, "and I'll-"

"What? Kill me?" Virya curls her fingers. Ben, half risen, falls back to his knees with a choked gasp. "You aren't Kylo Ren anymore. You can't threaten me. You can't _hurt _me!"

_But he can_, Rey thinks, tonguing blood from her teeth. _More than you want to admit._

Ben strains against the Force. His sheer strength seems to stun Virya. She raises both hands to try and contain him. Ben's face reddens. His body begins shaking. Yet still he does not yield.

Virya gapes. "Stop it, you fool! You can't defeat me. Not until you go back to the way you were!"

As Virya fights to subdue him, Rey flexes against her own restrains. They're loose, and getting looser by the second.

"You're right," Rey croaks, forcing the words through her bloodied mouth. If she can't distract Virya physically, she'll go after her mentally. "He isn't Kylo Ren anymore."

"You, shut up," Virya snaps, sweat running down her temple. "I told you to stay out of this."

Virya flexes her hand and Rey's noose tightens. But Ben finds the slack to rise to one knee.

"The man you dedicated your life to isn't the same man you're punishing," Rey wheezes. Her head feel like a grape ready to explode. Black specs swarm her eyes. "He never was."

"I said silence!"

"I know that you're hurting. I know what it feels like."

"You know nothing about me!"

"I know what it's like to have no one. To be alone."

Rey looks at Ben. Ben looks to her. In their shared glance is the memory of their fingers spanning entire galaxies to reach each other, a connection so profound that once made it had never really broken, despite both of them trying. Understanding flickers in Ben's eyes, a star shining through a black sky of disbelief.

Rey swallows and redoubles her efforts to speak. "You don't have to do this, Virya. You wanted to marry him. You love him. So don't."

Virya's dark eyes flash. She is trembling. When she grates out her reply, it is through pearly, gritted teeth. "You naive, plebeian fool. You don't even understand our concept of marriage. It's about an alliance. A stability of power. Love? Love isn't for our class."

"Then," Rey asks softly, "why do you still feel it?"

Virya's control shatters. Crying out, she goes to her knees on the floor. The Force recoils like a whip, freeing Rey and Ben both. Rey crashes from the wall to the ground, her joints singing numb.

She scrambles up to hands and knees.

Ben leaps from the table, surging for Virya.

Virya sees him. Her wrist flashes. There's the gleam of a blaster, aimed at his gut.

"No!" Rey flings out her hand and the Force to knock the blaster away.

It does so, slamming the blaster, then table, then the two other occupants across the room. Rey clamps down, trying to contain the power.

But as she does, Virya's presence splinters into her mind, wrapping around the Force within Rey and attempting to draw it out.

"Stop!" Rey chokes. "You don't know what you're-"

But she is too late. The tide of the Force and Virya's tug overwhelm Rey's defenses. The Force springs forward like a cosmic demon. Roaring. Triumphant. Free.

**#**

The Force tries to tear Rey inside out, the same as it had in Rosshel's auction box. A storm rages around her. _Within _her. And Rey stands helpless in the eye of it, drowning.

It's not the same as the auction. It's worse.

Someone screams.

It's Virya. Or Rey. Or Ben.

Maybe it's the Force itself.

How can Rey tell when her every pore is gaping wide to shriek?

Blunt pain tells her she's fallen to her knees. Fingernails cutting into her shoulders tell her she's clutching at herself, willing the box of her being to shut. She wills her eyes to open and take in the exterior world, in case it is the last time.

The balcony door is smashed open. Jagged glass is everywhere. The massive table sprawls on it's side, half out in the night. Thick tapestries twist and jerk on their rods as if trying to flee, tearing themselves on the shattered windows.

Virya is there, her face white as a sheet. Her presence still gripping at a toehold in the torrent of Rey's power. No longer trying to draw it and into herself, she is now just trying to survive it.

And Ben. Ben is crawling toward her on his elbows, ducking furniture and dragging a bleeding leg behind him. Her name is on his lips. His hand reaches for her.

_Don't! _Rey panics as he draws nearer. _It'll kill you. Stay back! Get away!_

She thinks it and Force lightening forks out, flaying the tile and inch from his elbow. Coming that close to killing him. He keeps coming for her anyway, glaring at her as if she'd struck out at him on purpose.

She supposes a part of her had. Some irrational, animal part that was trying to keep him safe by making him get away. It's useless, she knows. There's no more getting away now. It's too late for that.

Rey pitches forward and Ben jerks up to catch her, cradling her in his lap like a child. His hair and clothes whip wildly in the storm. A chair leg glances off his temple, leaving deep splinters and blood. He's too focused on her to care.

She knows that he is speaking. But he is too far away. She feels she is falling backward, away from that beautiful face. Away from everything.

"…do this, sweetheart… know you can…"

But he's wrong. She can't. She is already undone. The Force will make her an instrument of destruction. Of her friends. Herself. Her love. Knowing this, Rey's final defense, her will, finally fails. She feels it buckle, a storm wall collapsing. She free-falls into the Force. Her body and mind will frisson apart. And then, everything else.

_I'm not strong enough for this, _she thinks. _Not without you. I'm sorry. I love you. _

Something catches her. Someone in the Force. A net as thin as spider silk, barely strong enough to hold together her mind. But it does hold. It is the first time Rey has ever felt it, yet it's familiar somehow.

_Virya._

With shock, Rey opens her eyes, turning her head on Ben's knee to see Virya, pale as death, gritting her teeth with the effort. Every muscle and tendon in her lithe body strains. She is holding Rey together.

How? Why? Was she trying to help or just saving her own skin? Was there even a difference anymore?

Ben is shouting. "Give her over to me, Virya!"

"I can't! If I let go for a second, we die!"

"Don't and we die anyway! You're not strong enough to hold her! She and I are a dyad! I'm the only one who can-!"

And because he is so focused on convincing Virya, on holding Rey in his arms, Ben doesn't see the door fly open behind him. Doesn't see Doran in the doorway, taking in the scene. Pulling a blaster from his waist and aiming it at the back of Ben's head.

"No!"

Rey screams. But Virya is the one who acts.

She flings the last of her Force at Doran, knocking the blaster from her father's hands and sending him hurtling down the stairs like a rag doll.

As Virya expends the last of her power, the thin net she'd spun falls out.

Rey plummets into the Force.

**#**

"How the hell did this happen?!"

Poe shoots his blaster straight into the eye of a Lannlas berserker. The charging behemoth hits the ground hard. But an object in motion stays in motion, especially an object that large. The corpse skids the entire length of the ballroom and takes out a table of drinks. Mulled wine sloshes down shallow steps already darkened with blood.

That makes the fifth man to die in as many minutes since the fighting broke out. It had happened quickly. One minute Rey and Ben left for the tower. The next, the Inner Circle had come back out in an opulent parade, following some new guy with blond hair and blue eyes who called himself the next Supreme Leader. When the whole room gasped in shock and started murmuring 'Doran Vorian', Poe had known they were in trouble.

Moreover, Rey and Ben had been nowhere to be seen.

So Poe had done what anyone would in his position. He started a small diversion so they could go look for their friends.

Only he hadn't counted on his small diversion devolving into a full scale brawl. Doran had ordered his followers to kill the enemy spies before mysteriously disappearing. The Drakuns and the Tannias had immediately angled for Finn and Poe. The big redheads however, Poe thought they were called the Lannlas, seemed unclear on who was or wasn't considered a spy. They started going after any guest who wasn't wearing clan clothes.

Chaos had ensued.

"This was supposed to be a covert spy mission!" Poe shouts in frustration at his next opponent, who has time to quirk a confused eyebrow at Poe's exclamation before noticing the sizzling hole in his gut. "So how did it suddenly turn into a shoot out?"

"Gee, I wonder!" Finn snaps, decking a Tannias swordsman in the jaw and then using the Force to hurl him into a Drakun spearman. "Maybe because you started screaming _Long Live the Rebellion_ and firing off your stupid blaster!?"

"Hey, I don't appreciate the blamey tone! That's not attitude we need right now. What I don't get is why didn't Rey warn us on the radio?"

"I don't know," Finn answers grimly, coming back to back with his friend and measuring the distance from their current position to the archway leading to the tower. "Why don't you shut up and help me clear a path through this shit show so we can find out?"

Poe downs another man, not a member of the Inner Circle families, but who had lunged at him with a knife anyway. "Easier said than done. Have you seen Rose yet?"

Finn grimaces. "Not yet."

Poe swears, and fires several rounds into the air. "Alright, listen up, assholes! We're not leaving this party without everyone we came with! And believe me, you want us to leave! So if any of you think you've got a prisoner or a hostage, don't even think about -"

Finn freezes. Poe feels the sudden tension at his back. He throws an eye over his shoulder. "Finn? You alright there, buddy?"

"No."

"What is it? Are you hit?"

"No, it's the Force. I can feel Rey. She…" Finn trails. "Oh no."

"I don't like the sound of that. Don't suppose you could clarify or… Finn! Wait!"

But Finn is already off. No longer fighting his way through or trying to clear a path, he is running full tilt at the archway as if his life depends on it. Or Rey's does.

Poe swears, taking off after his friend while trying to provide cover with his blaster. He downs at least three enemies who would have cut Finn down, so it takes a while to catch up with him. They sprint under the archway. A faint crackle in Poe's ear alerts him to the presence of an electric field.

He would stop to examine it, but Finn is still tearing down the hall. He'd bet the Falcon that radio field was the reason they'd heard nothing from Rey since she walked through it.

Finn is straight as an arrow, following something he feels in the Fore, leading them to a small, spiral staircase. Before they can start up it, something comes crashing down, nearly crushing them before they leap out of the way. Something large, heavy, with a shock of blond hair.

Doran Vorian stares up at them, his bright blue eyes unseeing, neck hanging from his body at an impossible angle.

Poe pants, staring into the dead man's eyes. "These Supreme Leaders., man Not much of a shelf life on 'em."

"Down!" Finn tackles Poe an instant before the explosion tears down the stairwell, knocking them both across the corridor and into the far wall.

Poe's ribs crack. He gasps against the pain. For a dazed moment, there is only broken bones and the world singing in his ears. He is vaguely aware of stone dust raining all around him, filtering into his lungs.

Then Finn is in motion, heaving heavy masonry off them both. He frees Poe's legs from a solid slab of granite. Poe hadn't even realized they were trapped. Once freed, they hurt like a bitch.

"Are you alright?" Finn is asking. "Can you walk?"

"Ugh."

"Stand?"

"Doubt it," Poe groans, tasting copper.

Finn jerks, glancing over his shoulder at the stairs. Someone is coming down them. Fast. And judging by the state of one deceased Doran Vorian, someone is probably dangerous.

Finn's expression steels. "How 'bout shoot?"

Poe's grimaces, tugging his blaster from under a brick. "Always."

Finn stands, braced for combat. Poe props himself on an elbow, sucking down pain. He angles his blaster at the landing, waiting for a clear shot. When he gets one, he jerks his finger off the trigger and nearly drops the weapon.

It is Ben Solo, bleeding from his right leg and his left temple, black hair disheveled, eyes a storm of madness. When he sees them, awareness barely registers. Finn has to grab Solo before he stops moving, recognition belatedly flickering in his face.

"What happened?" Finn demands. "This place is collapsing. Where's-"

Poe is clicking the safety on his blaster and trying to swallow the ringing in his ears. Judging by the state of his own legs, standing isn't an option.

"-have to get her out of here," Solo is saying. "She needs the lunar pool. _Now._"

And then Poe sees the reason for the madness in Solo's eyes.

It's Rey, cradled in Solo's arms. Her body is limp, face blank. Her eyes are like Doran's, wide open yet unseeing. And, more alarming, they are streaming with the bright, raw energy of the Force.


	39. But I Do

_**A/N: **_WE MADE IT. I present the final chapter of You, The Light. I, the Dark! I cannot stress enough how much I treasure your support for this fic. The enthusiasm and engagement from readers surpassed anything I'd ever expected and has been one of the few bright spots in 2020. Rating Warning (just to be safe): this chapter is rated M (not E). In my opinion, the content is fairly tame. However, if you aren't here for that and want to CTRL + F what section to skip, M content starts after the line "She's drowning now, too. Only in different ways." and lasts until 5th from last line (as in, it's safe to read the 5th from last line onward). (See the end of the chapter for more A/N).

Less than a year after her abandonment, a sandstorm devastates Jakku. From space it would have looked like a marble, red and swirling across the planet. From the surface, it had been a wall of destruction, spanning sky to sand, rending everything between into dust.

Rey gets caught in a wreck on the outskirts of the city. She'd been looking at the crashed ship for days, wondering if it might be her family's. If they were waiting to be rescued. If that's why they hadn't come back for her yet. After two days of wondering, Rey escapes the orphanage, risking a beating from the savage rug merchant who keeps her and six other children locked in a basement apartment until they're enough to sell. She will never set foot in that basement again, though she doesn't know it at the time.

It takes a day to climb the dune. If any citizens spotted a lone child trekking up the sand with nothing but a canteen swinging from her neck, they were too busy tying down their belongings and stockpiling food and water to retrieve her. By then the storm is a black underline in the far horizon. Rey glances at it from time to time with mild curiosity, too young to know any better.

The ship's interior is empty and unfamiliar. The cockpit is sealed by a seam of dried blood. Rey realizes she can't clearly remember what the inside of her family's ship had looked like. But she knows it wasn't this.

Just as she goes to leave, the storm hits. Nature slams into the dune, threatening to shove the ship's carcass over the far side and down a crevasse. The winds find a way in, ripping through gashes in the damaged hull. Grit scratches Rey's eyes and clogs her mouth. When she steps outside to make a run for the city, her feet are swept from beneath her and the sand tries to buff the very skin off her bones.

She crawls back into the shipwreck and finds a utility closet. She hides there with her canteen. The storm lasts for three days.

She is six, afraid and alone.

**#**

The Frost Ball mansion is falling apart. Even the very cliff face its carved from may not last the night. Finn moves as fast as he can while supporting Poe's weight, navigating the crumbling hallways for the group. Poe limps along, blaster primed and ready to shoot if anyone tries to attack.

But in reality, attack is the last of their worries now. All the other guests have fled or are fleeing, like rats from a sinking ship. Those who aren't are already dead.

Right on their heels, Ben runs with Rey in his arms. Now and then, when the rumbling and screaming isn't so loud, Finn catches traces of Ben's voice. He is talking to her, words low and broken up by ragged breathing. Asking her to hold on. Wake up. Promising that he will get her out of this.

Rey's voice never answers.

Finn tries not to think about that. Or about how Rey's head had lolled so lifelessly. How her eyes had stared, open yet unseeing, streaming with the light from the Force. Maybe she does hear Ben murmuring to her.

Maybe Ben just needs to believe she does.

One thing is for certain, Rey is the nexus of destruction. As they carry her through the hallways back toward the ballroom, the walls crack around them, stone and marble crumbling from the energy rippling from Rey's body. It's like standing next to an explosion. Finn does his best to bend the Force into shield to protect his friends, but it is so much stronger than he is, a raw and raging power. He knows he is out of his league.

As they pass through the archway back into the ballroom, a pillar collapses overhead. Finn catches it with the Force and practically hurls Poe across the threshold. Then he sprints across himself and whirls to hold the way open for Ben.

As he does, a second pillar cracks and topples from the opposite side. Finn's hold on the Force finally slips. The archway collapses, closing Rey and Ben off on the other side.

"No!" Poe roars, trying to stand. His injured legs fail him.

Finn sprints to the rock pile, digging his hands into it and thinking of Crait. That time had been like this, trapped with death closing in around them. Only then there had been a miracle waiting on the other side to clear a path to their deliverance. This time there will be no miracle. Their miracle is on the other side, dying. His mentor. His best friend. Finn knows he isn't strong enough to save her like she saved him. He rakes at the rubble anyway, heedless of the blood and the tears slicking his hands. He is too afraid to stop trying.

Then he feels a tremor in the Force.

He halts and steps back, disbelieving as the debris slowly slides forward, pushed by an invisible current. It isn't as elegant as the floating boulders Rey had lifted on Crait. But it's working.

Finn's heart thuds. His thoughts racing in fragments. _She's awake. Alive. _

But when the rubble clears to waist height, it is Ben kneeling on the other side. His face is white and fierce, twisted in a snarl. One arm supports Rey on his bent knee and chest. The other is outstretched and reaching, pushing the Force through the arch. Finn stumbles through the debris to help Ben up. Together they limp into the ballroom.

"The Force," Finn pants, once they're safely on the other side. "You're connected again?"

"No." Ben shakes his head. "I can only store a little at a time. That was borrowed power."

"Borrowed?" Finn glances down at a Rey.

"Not from her. I can't reforge the dyad until she lets me. She has to decide she wants it."

"I don't think she's in a state to decide anything right now," Poe says darkly.

"Who then?" Finn asks, wondering if there's someone else in the Force who could help them.

"…Virya."

"Virya?" Poe asks. "She's here?"

"She was. I don't know if -"

A crack ruptures the air, deafening them. Beyond the glass dome walls, a huge section of the cliff face breaks free and plummets into the canyon below.

"We have to get out of here. Before the whole mountain comes down." Finn glances around. "The elevator shafts are completely caved in. I'm not strong enough in the Force to clear it. Can you?"

Ben hesitates, then shakes his head. "That was the last of what she gave me. I'm dry."

Poe swears, swiveling to take in the room as best he can. "Is there another way into the hangar? Any way at all?"

Grim silence is Ben's only answer.

Another deep rumble ruptures the air. Only this time, it is louder. Closer. Reverberations thud in their chests. The mansion's foundation rocks. It's _in_ the foundation, Finn realizes, looking down to see a dark shadow looming beneath the glass dance floor.

"Back! Back! Back!" He hauls Poe by the collar.

Ben scrambles, keeping Rey tight to his chest.

The shadow meets the frosted glass and presses against it. The floor buckles, then shatters, birthing a monster up from below. Not a monster, Finn realizes. A ship. Flown directly up from the hanger into the ballroom above. The ramp drops, revealing a small woman with crimson hair and a powder blue gown. Her blaster is aimed straight at them.

Upon seeing them, she blinks and lowers her weapon. "Finn?"

Her voice helps him see past the wig and the dress. _"Rose!?" _

"Hey," she says, a bit raggedly. "Thought you could use a ride."

**#**

_Let me in._

The storm howls for her.

The wrecked ship flexes and moans. Six year old Rey stays as small as she can, as tight as she can. For if the storm should find her, it will devour and subsume her into dust.

It wouldn't be so bad, she thinks. As dust, she wouldn't be so frightened. As dust, she wouldn't be alone. She'd be part of the storm, her body and her mind worn down into a cloud of molecules, unburdened by pain or fear.

But, as dust, she wouldn't be here for them when they came back.

Them. Her loved ones. It has already been months since Rey realized, despairingly, she no longer recalls their faces. Their names. In her memory, there is attachment. A bond so strong it threads her through with ache. But identity has become a nebulous thing. A phantom. All she knows is that she's been separated from something. A missing part of herself. A part she yearns for. A part she _must_ be with again. That thought, that need, is the only thing that keeps her from giving herself over to the storm.

_Let me in. _

In the screaming wind, she hears a phantom calling for her. Her lost ones. The storm. Rey can no longer tell. She shudders in her shelter, tear tracks dry and tacky with sand on her cheeks.

_Rey._

The wind says her name. Rey jerks. Not the storm, she recognizes.

The missing.

Him.

"Ben?"

**#**

"She's up!" Poe shouts from the front passenger chair of the four-seat ship. "Did you hear that? She said his name!"

"She's not up." Finn braces, using the Force to keep the ship from splitting apart from Rey's power.

In the pilot's seat, Rose steers with gritted teeth. Her evening gown has been slashed off at the thighs for better mobility. Her brow is streaked with grease. Poe sits beside her supervising the flight, his legs hang useless in the foot well.

"What do you mean she's not?" Poe demands, twisting over his shoulder to look back. "She just said 'Ben'. Clear as day!"

In the backseat, Ben sits with his eyes closed and Rey folded in his lap. A frown line creases when Poe snaps his name. Otherwise, his expression is perfectly blank.

"Shut up!" Finn hisses. "Shut up and leave them alone. Tell Rose how to drive but don't say their names and don't do anything to distract them. He's trying to reach her. But she's deep in the Force. Break his concentration now and it could be all over."

"Define _all over,_" Rose demands. "She dies?"

Finn glances across the seat where Rey lays folded in Ben's arms.

"Her. Him. Us too. If he can't reach her now, we all go out together."

**#**

_Rey. _

His presence brushes along the edge of the ship. Her shelter. Her mind.

The voice is not of the storm. It is Ben's. Out there in the desert, waiting for her to let him in. Rey can feel him just on the other side, his palms and forehead pressed to the wreck's exterior.

"How?" she asks, astonished. "How are you surviving? How have you not been torn apart?"

He doesn't answer her question, but she can feel the pain and what the storm is costing him. He is being torn apart, slowly but surely, out there by the Force.

"I'm here, Rey. I came for you. But you have to let me in. Let me in, Rey. Let me be with you."

Rey stumbles from the closet and finds her way to the door. Even inside the ship, the storm blinds her. Robs her breath. Scratches blood from beneath her flesh. If she opens the door to him now, it will surely destroy them both.

"I'm afraid," she tells him.

"Don't be. The storm is savage but we can weather it. As long as we do it together."

Rey lays her fingers on the locks that sit between them. Yet something stops her. Some memory. Some dread. Her hand falls back down to her side. "Once the storm is over," she says, "you'll have to leave again."

Ben's silence is louder than the howling wind.

Fresh tears prick Rey's eyes. She is six and waiting in a sandstorm. She is twenty and waiting in the Force.

She steps back from the door. "If I never let you in, you can't go away."

"Rey."

"I won't."

"Sweetheart-"

"I can't."

"You must. This is the way it's supposed to be. You know it."

"I don't care how it's supposed to be!"

"You do," he says gently. "I know you do."

Rey hugs herself. Her arms are a spoor substitute for his. She burrows her face into her shoulder, hiding from him and the world. "If I can wait this out alone, you can stay there where you are."

"You can't wait it out. Until you let me in, the storm will never stop. And even if it did, I'd still be out here and you'd be in there. We'd be next to each other but separated forever. You don't want that. Do you?"

"No," she gasps. "But it's better than you going back to the Dark."

"Rey, you'll die in there. Waiting for the storm to end."

She curls more tightly. She knows it to be true but doesn't care.

"Just like I'll die out here," he says softly, "waiting for you."

Those words rock her, shooting her up to her feet. Through fear, she hadn't seen it before. Ben is on the other side, waiting for her. And every second he waits, the Force tears more of him apart. His dying is unthinkable. Yet it's happened before, hasn't it? Once. Somehow. It could happen again. Unless Rey refuses to let it. Unless she lets him in and saves him.

She throws the door open. She falls into his waiting arms.

**#**

Rey wakes in the lunar pool.

She is naked. Warm. Her body lays half-submerged on the shallowest step of the pool. Her breathing echoes steady against the temple walls. Other than that, there is only silence. Perfect and still. Rey stirs. The water laps gently. Her limbs feel thick and sluggish with disuse. Slowly, she sits, sliding herself down a step lower so the water envelopes her chest. The water wraps around her, alien and ever so faintly… _wrong_. She'd thought that feeling would go away once she was balanced again. But even now, though the storm has passed inside her, some sense of wrongness has lingered.

She looks around the empty temple, confirming what she already feels.

She is alone.

Then, she isn't.

Ben stands at the edge of the pool. His back to her, fully dressed in a black pilot's jacket and boots. He stills, chin turning slightly toward his shoulder, as if he's just heard the faint sound of water lapping behind him. When he turns around to face her, she can't see his surroundings. Only him.

She says softly to him, "Hi."

Ben swallows some emotion, then responds. "Hi."

For a moment they just look at each other, together but apart, separated by space but connected through it by their bond. If Rey had doubted when she saw him suddenly standing at the edge of the pool, she knows for certain now. The dyad has been reforged.

She puts aside the complexity of emotions that surges at that thought. Instead she asks, "How long was I out?"

He glances at something, checking some control panel wherever he is that she cannot see. "Nearly three days. I stayed beside you for the first two. Once I felt that you would wake up again, I thought it would be easier if…" he doesn't finish the sentence but his dark eyes communicate the rest. _If I was already gone._

Rey glances down at the opaque water to process the information. Then she looks up again sharply as her memories coalesce. "The others? Base ship?"

"They made it," Ben says. "Once we reforged the dyad, Rose, Finn and Dameron got us to base. I thought Virya might have destroyed it but… it was still there. Just as we left it. She must have used the Force to slip away without detection. They hadn't even realized she had gone."

Rey exhales a relieved sigh. "So Leia?"

Ben's gaze softens. "My mother is fine. She and the others are waiting for you on the ship. I told them to let you rest here to help you recover. Finn wasn't crazy about the idea but… well, it looks like he listened."

Rey sits back a fraction into the water, numb relief swelling in her. "And the Inner Circle? The ball?"

"Dead and destroyed, respectively."

"What happened?"

"You did. When you lost control, you brought down the entire mansion. Few could have survived. For certain, Doran at least is dead."

At the mention of Doran, Rey's memories come into sharper focus. She remembers the tower. She and Ben walking into a trap. Doran revealing himself as their enemy. And Virya. Virya betraying them for her father, and then betraying her father for Ben. Virya as the last thing holding Rey together in the Force before everything went dark…

"Virya?" Rey murmurs. "Is she…?"

Ben's expression darkens. "I don't know. When you fell, half the tower was destroyed in an instant. I felt Virya for a second, just long enough to pass some of her power. Since then, I haven't sensed so much as a hint of her. Maybe she perished in the explosion. Maybe she survived and is concealing herself. I can't know for sure."

Rey probes gently at the Force with her own awareness, searching for any impressions of the Vorian heiress. She's surprised how smooth the Force feels to her. Natural. Balanced. Right. The dyad has realigned her, restoring Rey to her former state. But even restored she finds no traces of Virya. Not even a flickering of her presence.

Despite everything, guilt tugs faintly at Rey's chest. "If she's dead, then I killed her."

Ben moves for her then, coming around the perimeter of the pool to stand close to the steps. His shin is an inch from her spine. If she leaned back on it, would he feel solid?

"If she's dead," Ben says, "it isn't your fault."

Rey knows he believes it. She just wishes she did too. "She helped us in the end. She held me together as long as she could."

"Or she was looking out for herself. Keeping you together was the only way to save her own skin."

"She killed her father to save you. Maybe she was only acting on instinct, but still. You're alive because of it. Both of us are."

Ben doesn't have a rebuttal for that, only grim silence.

"If she is still out there," Rey says, "I hope she comes back."

"She won't. Not if she knows what's good for her."

Rey looks up. "And you?" she asks. "Are you coming back to me from wherever you are?"

Emotions war in Ben's face. The victors are solemness and sorrow. "You know I can't."

"According to who?"

"The entire fucking universe. The Force itself. We're a dyad again now. Destined to fall on opposite sides. That's how we bring balance to the -"

"I read the texts," Rey reminds him. "I know what they say. What I want to know is, are you coming back?"

Ben looks down at her, lost. She feels him walling himself off from her, protecting against heartbreak. Her own heart aches to see it.

Swallowing, Rey stands on the steps and turns around to him. Not caring that she is naked and he is clothed. Not caring that he's likely already put countless galaxies between them.

She reaches out to take his hands in hers. He feels solid and real.

"Come." Gently, she pulls.

Ben blinks at her and then at the milky water. Slowly, like a man dividing himself in half, he shrugs off his jacket, kicks off his boots, and steps down into the water. Rey leads him out to chest depth, until there is nothing but the water and her and him.

She holds his hands beneath the surface. "You don't have to go."

"If I stay it will be harder for both of us. The Force will push us to different sides. You, the Light. I, the Dark. Maybe it won't happen for days. Months. But eventually, it will. And when that happens, I won't have the strength to leave you again."

"So don't."

"Rey-"

She kisses him. Long, slow, and deep.

Ben gives into it in a moment. His arms wrap around her, pulling her into him as if she is a sun, warming the coldness of an empty void. His hands on her bare skin set currents in her veins.

When they break apart, foreheads and nose tips still touching, breath melding, Rey whispers what she thinks. "I need you closer than this."

Her fingertips dig faintly into the nape of his neck. Ben dips forward, kissing her again without any more encouragement. He lifts her easily off her feet, her weight halved by the water, until she is resting on him like she had beneath the pier on the night she'd nearly drowned.

She's drowning now, too. Only in different ways.

Ben's tongue in her mouth and the heat his body herds Rey past the point of clear thought. She unravels into something oceanic, a moving constellation of desires. Her body is the tide and he is the cosmic force, calling up the waves to break against the shore. She want him there too, with her in that place. Acting solely on want and desire. If she can get him there, she thinks, she knows that he will stay.

"Rey," he whispers her name like worship between kisses. "Rey."

His voice and the warm wetness of the pool set her head spinning.

It must affect him too because Ben backs them up to the steps, folding his knees without breaking their kisses. Sitting on the deepest step, he pulls her into his lap. And Rey feels him then. A line of want pressed against her. She breaks their kiss to gasp.

Ben's forehead drops to her collarbone. He breathes deeply, as if breathing can keep him from falling apart.

Only Rey doesn't want him to do that. She wants him completely undone.

She plants kisses to his temple while her fingers hunt the hem of his shirt. Then she sits back just enough to pull it over his head, ignoring his shudder when her weight shifts in his lap. His shirt slaps wet on the side of the pool. Before Rey can reach under the water for his belt, Ben catches her hands in his.

"Are you sure?" he whispers, strong fingers sliding over her knuckles, enfolding wrists, and then gliding up her arms, until he's framing her neck with his palms and her jaw with his thumbs. "You're sure?"

She looks straight into his eyes, and shudders at the glimpse she catches of herself inside them. A glimpse of herself the way he sees her, reflected in his gaze.

"Yes," is all she can manage, hoping he understands how deeply she means it. "Yes."

After that, there is no more speaking. There are only fragments of words. Whispers. Gasps. Murmurs and broken pieces of _yes _and _there_ and _please. _They explore each other until there is nothing left untouched. And when they crest, the ecstasy is amplified by their bond. Him feeling hers, her feeling his, as together they become a singularity. Balanced. One. Around them the water swirls. It feels right for the first time.

Rey comes down slowly, folding around him, clinging to his frame for support. Breathless and dizzy and knowing now that there is no way she can ever let this go.

"Don't leave." She crosses her forearms at the nape of his neck. "Help me rebuild. Stay."

Ben buries his face in her neck. Enclosed in her, his whole body tremors. His breathing is ragged. "Rey. We've been through this," he whispers. "The Light… it doesn't want me."

She takes his face in her hands, guiding it up to meet her gaze. "But I do."

The vulnerability he shows her then makes Rey hold to him more tightly. He is afraid. His fingers are laid on the locks that sits between them. This time, she will be the one catch him when he falls to the side where she waits.

"Ben. I do."

_**A/N:**_ \- Epilogue: yes, there is one, though I haven't written it yet. I expect it will take a few weeks to be ready for upload. I'll keep my Twitter ( Nanirain1) updated w/ the latest. - Sequel: a few of you asked if there will be one. I'm not currently planning on that, however, I do have some bonus material (Ben POV chapters etc.) drafted that I may revisit and decide to upload. - More Reylo?: a few of you have also asked if I plan to write other Reylo fics. I have a couple ideas (some of which I've teased on my Twitter) but I'm planning to take a break for a little while. YLID was a beast (beloved, but a beast nonetheless) and I need a lil vacation. If you have any questions feel free to comment here or head over to my Twitter ( Nanirain1). Thanks again for all your love and support. May the Force be With You! 


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